The female of the species
In the day time TV stakes This Morning has always been king. But then there was always the problem of what to watch in the afternoon. Until recently for the out-of-term telly addict there was no option between five and six but to watch Neighbours for the second time in the day. That was until this summer's advent of the Weakest Link.
Ok so the program is the product of a bizarre breeding experiment involving Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Big Brother, genetically engineered with the cheesey graphics and post match interviews of Gladiators. For all the column inches that the show has generated, the fact that the show is almost unique in quiz show history in employing a female presenter has strangely been over looked.
It is not that women are exactly strangers to such shows. But that the sadisdic monster that Anne Robinson plays in the Weakest Link could scarcely be said to be in the same mould as fellow Liverpudlian Cilla Black's screen persona. Let alone the air-headed duo of Rosemary Ford and Jenny Powell, glamorous assistants to Bruce Forsyth and John Leslie respectively.
The previous holder of the title of "the scariest person on TV" was William G. Stewart. The steely questioner of retired civil servants from Kent and housewives from Yorkshire could never get away with Robinson's verbal assaults. His show 15 to 1, much loved by grannies the length and breadth of Britain, now seems like a more gentile version of Robinson's vicious knifing match. The fearless Howard slayer Paxman can meanwhile only muster a bored "come on" while the inevitable planet brains from Oriel dither over an answer.
Robinson lashes into her victims with glee when they trip up. "Are you dense?", "Who is the stupidest?" she sneers, before seeing them off with a mocking "Goodbye." The popularity of the programme and its recent sale to several other countries shows that we have a "collective desire to be dominated by ill-tempered women," according to the Guardian's Julie Burchill. But this is surely not the reason that people tune in. We simply have a desire to watch other people being humiliated. Robinson may be a dominatrix but we are not her victims. We are voyeurs, amazed at the contestants who chose to be abused.
When Carol Vordermann wanted to lose her geeky Countdown image she ditched her intelligent programmes, started wearing skimpy dresses and producing acres of mindless trash. No one could take her seriously and everyone stopped watching. Now we are presented with a more complex transformation. From sincere consumer rights activist on Watchdog and 'Pointless Views' to a phoney Armani clad she-devil.
"The British have long had a fascination with bossy redheads," says John Preston in announcing the Weakest Link as the Sunday Telegraph's programme of the week. Faced with an increasingly lightweight supporting cast on Watchdog it is unsurprising Robinson wanted to get out and start again. She is not the first; Chris Tarrant used to be a teacher. What is unexpected is the originality of her move into entertainment.
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Catherine Muge
Nadine Feyder
23rd Nov 2000