Search results for ""Author Chris Tarrant""

Over the last two and a half years, Chris Tarrant has travelled, literally, all around the world filming Extreme Railway Journeys for Channel 5. The hugely successful TV series is already being repeated, and broadcast rights have been, and continue to be, picked up in other countries, while it is also being released on DVD. Chris's journeys have taken him to the Congo, India, Australia, Bolivia (twice), Japan, Siberia, Myanmar, Canada and Cuba, and the latest programmes see the completion of filming in Alaska, Argentina, Azerbaijan, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Chris Tarrant's Extreme Railway Journeys brings to life beautifully not only the romance of travelling by train, but also the sights, sounds and smells of the countries and places visited, while also illuminating the customs and attitudes of the people the author encountered along the way. But, as he says, 'I should have known what I was in for and what the word "extreme" means, when the very first show saw us filming in the Congo - where the train was six DAYS late.' Beautifully illustrated with exclusive colour photographs, Extreme Railway Journeys is not only a record of remarkable journeys in extraordinary places by one of our shrewdest commentators. It is also a demonstration of the principle that 'to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive'.

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In It’s Not a Proper Job, TV legend Chris Tarrant regales the reader with hilarious and heart-warming stories from his stellar 50-year career in television and radio. With trademark wit and self-mockery, Chris not only recalls his behind-the-scenes capers with fellow celebrities, but also shows us how, as a man of the people, he has relished rubbing shoulders with ordinary folk on his way to becoming one of the nation’s favourite TV faces. A former teacher and ATV newsreader, Chris soon established himself at the forefront of trailblazing telly as the host of Tiswas, and here recounts this 1970s, anarchic, flan-flinging children’s show that spearheaded a fresh format and a new era for Saturday morning TV packed with pranks, full of fun, and which remains a benchmark to this day. For later audiences, Chris will be more familiar as the face of yet another groundbreaking show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? which he presented for sixteen gripping years, and which grew into a global phenomenon exported to over one hundred countries. Here Chris remembers the joyous highs of contestants’ life-changing winnings, the frustrating lows of loss, the cringing embarrassment of ignorance, and the infamous cheating of the ‘Coughing Major’. Spanning five decades, Chris’s television credits are the envy of aspirational TV stars, but reading his laugh-out-loud anecdotes – akin to having a chat with the man himself over a pint, or listening to one of his entertaining, after-dinner speeches – reveals a man still amused by life, by the people he meets, and by his own humble assertion that none of his glittering career can, in any way, be called ‘a proper job’.

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We all love a quiz. It's virtually impossible to hear a quiz question without blurting the answer out loud, if you happen to know it. We spend our lives accumulating useless facts, information and trivia, most of which just sits quietly in our brains gathering dust, so it's very gratifying to be able to answer quiz questions and prove all that learning wasn't a complete waste of time. Right from the birth of commercial television, in the mid-1950s, quiz shows have been a staple of the nation's TV viewing habits. People of a certain age will remember Hughie Green's Double Your Money and Michael Miles with Take Your Pick, but, seven decades later, quiz shows are still going strong - The Chase and Pointless being two hugely successful current examples. The programmes have become more sophisticated and glitzy, the prizes have become bigger and better, but, ultimately, they are still rooted in the very simple premise of a question being asked and a person answering it either correctly or incorrectly, leading to reward or forfeit. This fascinating, amusing and well-researched book is a personal and affectionate guide to the evolution of the TV quiz show, through all the many changes over the years, leading to the ultimate game-changer, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The book doesn't stop there, but it does give a detailed insider's view of the most important quiz show ever created. Readers will wallow in nostalgia reading about Bullseye, Sale Of The Century and Blockbusters, and they will learn surprising facts about all the many quizzes we have watched over the years. Did you know that the format for BBC TV's Mastermind was based on its creator's experiences of wartime interrogation by The Gestapo?

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