Some fans accused Labbett of throwing the game to allow a contestant to win money so she could visit, as he recalls, her daughter in New Zealand.
“I’m not that nice a guy. [The answer] just wouldn’t come to me,” says Labbett, on a mid-evening (NZT) Zoom call to the Herald from the ITV studios in London, an hour before he is due on set.
“I can guarantee you I have never even contemplated getting a question wrong, let alone [losing] the game.”
He’s proud that The Chase host Bradley Walsh will attest to his laser-like desire to win.
“Bradley, when he gets asked about the Chasers, is very diplomatic. He says he never plays favourites, he’s scrupulously fair with all of us … but when he gets asked who’s the most competitive Chaser, he says The Beast, bar none.”
Labbett says he’ll take that compliment “to the grave”.
His beastly nickname has two inspirations – one, his surname is pronounced like the French word la bête, for The Beast.
The second reason is more obvious.
Labbett is a giant, standing at just under two metres tall (6ft6in). He was also once big in girth, but he’s lost a considerable amount of weight over the years – from a high of 185kg to 125kg today, thanks to a low-carb, low-sugar diet, partly spurred by a battle with type 2 diabetes, and less of an appetite since Covid.
Mark ‘The Beast’ Labbett has cut down on sweet treats – and lost 60kg in the process.
He’s emphasised to UK media that there has been no artificial help.
“I think the diabetes may have helped because I eat a lot less. I drink a lot more fluids,” he told The Sun. “I was tempted by the gastric band but a good friend of mine who’s a GP said my problem is sugar, I have a sweet tooth.”
Over the Zoom call with the Herald, Labbett’s transformed physical appearance and angular facial features reflect his health progress.
His brain, however, remains just as sharp – if not sharper.
He’s now into the 16th year of the show, and says his weight loss and regular gym exercise mean he feels and is performing better than ever.
“This series, I’m not going to give results away, but I’m making far fewer mistakes than I have been. You’ve seen often I’ll do something and then I go, ‘Oh you idiot’ because I realise I’ve said something dumb. So far, I’ve barely done that in the last few months.
“Ultimately, it’s true – healthy body, healthy mind.”
There’s also been an important inspiration for his health focus: 7-year-old Lawrence, the son he shares with ex-wife Katie. Labbett’s romantic life is occasionally the focus of tabloid headlines in the UK: Katie is a second cousin and the pair were married for six years, until 2020. They are still friends. Last year, Labbett split from his girlfriend of one year, UK TV presenter Hayley Palmer.
Mark Labbett and wife Katie Labbett pictured in 2017. Photo / Getty Images
At 59, Labbett wants to be around when Lawrence marks significant milestones, such as his 21st.
“I was a father late in life, and it’s quality of life. You realise it’s great fun seeing him. We have a great little relationship. I’m really pleased that, in order of importance, he’s healthy, happy, tall and very smart.
“I’ll mention it – with my producer sitting and listening on this – but his teachers were saying, ‘We’ve never seen a memory like it’.”
Labbett adds, with a trademark lack of modesty: “And I go, I have!”
He poses his own question: In 15 to 20 years, might we see the “Baby Beast”?
And then proceeds to answer it: “No, it’s up to him. He’s got the raw gifts – that sticky memory, which means stuff goes in automatically.”
Labbett says becoming a Chaser was his destiny, a job he was “born for”. He has been on the show, which airs on TVNZ 1 at 5pm every day, since it started in 2009, alongside Walsh and the other original Chaser, Shaun Wallace.
Other Chasers have joined the show progressively – Anne Hegerty in 2010, Paul Sinha in 2015, Jenny Ryan in 2015 and Darragh Ennis in 2020.
According to the website One Question Shootout, the six Chasers’ average win record is 76.5%. Labbett is just below that, at a 75.2% win record from his almost 500 shows aired in the UK. According to Labbett, he’s done more than 600 shows when you take into account the Australian and US versions.
He says The Chase cast are all close – Hegerty is the godmother of Lawrence.
“We were just commenting that we’d just had our 2500th episode broadcast. We did the first one, and, me being me, I knew it was on the 3rd of June, 2009.
“On the 4th of June, 2009, it was Bradley’s birthday, and there I learned a very important lesson … don’t try and match Bradley drink for drink.”
He attributes much of the show’s success to Walsh.
The Chase host Bradley Walsh.
“I’m tempted to be cheeky and say it’s me, but, no, I think that we’re lucky we’ve got Bradley, who in my opinion is the best game-show host in the English-speaking world, and as I’ve worked around the world, I can say that with some confidence.
“He’s a natural professional … and he’s also very generous. He lets the contestants in, he lets us in.
“I think we have a huge advantage in that we have potentially five conversations going on: Bradley and the contestants, us and the contestants, us and Bradley, the three of us all together, and then you can even bring in the guys and girls at the back there, so it feels much more natural and organic.
“To a certain degree, it’s more like a bunch of people at the bar trying to put one over on each other.”
The Chasers, from left: Shaun Wallace, Darragh Ennis, Anne Hegerty, Paul Sinha, Jenny Ryan, and Mark Labbett.
Labbett, who was a mathematics teacher and competitive quizzer, came to The Chase after appearing on a string of TV quiz and game shows in the UK between 1999 and 2009, including Mastermind, twice, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Stake Out and Grand Slam.
“I had an advantage,” he says of his audition for The Chase.
“I’d heard they’d asked for me because they were looking for someone on the national British quiz circuit who was a decent player, and someone ideally who can be intimidating and confrontational. For some reason, my name kept coming up …
“I understood theatrics, so everybody else went to the auditions wearing their best jumpers or maybe a suit.
“I went along wearing my old Soviet army-style raincoat. I stride in and duck under the doorframe, my coat’s flailing behind me like Batman’s cape, and the first producer said, pretty much, ‘you got the job at that point’.
“The fact that I could then back it up with knowing a few things added nicely to it.”
He says he operates differently from other Chasers such as Shaun Wallace.
“Shaun is the nicest guy in the world. I wish I had his work ethic. He’s unbelievable. If I had his work ethic, I’d have been a headmaster or principal by 35. I’m brilliant but lazy, as I modestly say.”
Mark Labbett poses alongside fellow ‘Chaser’ Shaun Wallace. Photo / Instagram
He says he has a different approach.
“I go through life and I’m just great at absorbing things. So going down the street, I’ll clock the billboards for the latest films or books or TV series. When they’re showing the promos for new TV shows or Netflix … almost instinctively I clock the name and who the main stars are.”
His competitive spirit stems from his love of sport; he was never athletically agile, he says, but his stature meant that he enjoyed playing basketball, rugby, and cricket.
He was the Oxford University shotput champion in 1985. “I did a lot of sports where obviously I wasn’t going to be picked for my agility. I’ve always enjoyed the competitive side of it.”
He was a lock in rugby.
“One of the reasons the weight went on was that I stopped playing rugby in the mid-90s but I kept eating as if I was training. [It’s a] big mistake a lot of sports people make, and I made it big time.
“Obviously I’m a type 2 diabetic, I’ve got one of these glucose monitors on my arm now, and it’s a gamechanger because you can’t kid yourself, ‘Oh I can have that chocolate bar, it won’t make much difference’.
“When you see, the readings climb like Mt Kilimanjaro, you’re going, ‘Yeah, it would’.”
After our interview today, Labbett is straight into makeup and wardrobe for the trademark black suit.
“It’s not a massively onerous schedule,” says Labbett. Normally, an hour-long show will take anywhere between one and three-quarter hours to two hours to shoot.
On most days, ITV will film three shows, with three different Chasers. “We can [individually] do two shows in a day, but I think it’s fair to say the second show was slightly phoning it in a bit, or saving your energy.”
Like a sportsman, Labbett has a 10 to 15-minute warm-up routine before filming starts – he’ll have someone firing questions at him to activate his brain.
While it takes time to film different takes, Labbett says the show isn’t often interrupted by legal or timing issues.
Mark Labbett says host Bradley Walsh, left, is a huge factor in the success of The Chase.
“We have an overriding duty of care to the contestants, not to me. Just yesterday, it was a minor thing, but there was some quibble over one of the questions, and they threw it out because it might have disadvantaged the contestants.
“It didn’t disadvantage me, but I straight away said, that’s fine because we’ve got to be seen to be fair.
“We have adjudicators here called Beyond Dispute, who are all qualified lawyers, and their number one priority is that the contestants need to leave feeling that they’ve been treated as fairly as possible.
“Not every [game] show does it, and it makes such a difference to the quality. Win or lose, the contestants hopefully feel they’ve had a good time and it’s been as fair as possible.”
Labbett remembers many of the shows. One of his favourites was early on, when The Chase started offering minus offers.
The fourth contestant, having encouraged everyone else to go high, went for the minus option. The other three contestants turned on him and started backing Labbett. They loved it when the contestant was eliminated.
“They were cheering me on. He slunk off and it ended up being a great game. They won 25-24 … it was a great show.”
Labbett says he’s lucky that his Chase role has taken him around the world, but he has never been to New Zealand.
He’s a little rusty on a quick Kiwi pop quiz, in which I ask him for either of the names of the people who fill the two most scrutinised roles in this country, the Prime Minister and the All Black captain.
He knows we have a relatively new PM. “Jacinda Ardern was [PM] up until a couple of months ago and I’m trying to remember the name of the new guy … just won the election.”
Hmmmm.
On the All Black captain, he mentions Richie McCaw as a past leader. He knows there was a guy called Cane (Sam Cane), before being told it’s one of the Barrett brothers. He knows there are three of them. “Beauden, probably.”
Hmmmm.
Perhaps a warm-up is needed.
Labbett says if The Chase ever films episodes in New Zealand, he’ll be here for it.
“I can be utterly confident Anne and I will have our bags packed inside half an hour. I’m not a traveller for travel’s sake, but I love travelling for [the show]. I always look around whenever I’m in different parts of the world and go, ‘I’m here, they’re paying me for this’.
“And it was the job I was born to do.”
The Chase screens on TVNZ 1 seven days a week, from 5pm-6pm. It is also available on TVNZ+
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor. As well as a weekly media column, he has a regular interview series featuring noteworthy and leading New Zealanders including Wayne Brown, Ruby Tui, Paddy Gower, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Scotty Stevenson, Chlöe Swarbrick, Simon Power, Josh and Helen Emett, Sir Ian Taylor, David Kirk, Sir Ashley Bloomfield, Paul Henry, Simon Barnett, Sophie Moloney, Brian and Hannah Tamaki, Sir Grahame Sydney, David Lomas, Carrie Hurihanganui, Sir Russell Coutts, Steven O’Meagher, Juliet Peterson, Brendan Lindsay, Tony Astle, Anna Mowbray and David Higgins.