Romesh Ranganathan Discusses The Weakest Link and being famous

Romesh Ranganathan returned for the second series as the host of Anne Robinon’s famous tv quiz The weakest link, but he never imagined being a presenter.

Romesh Ranganathan is the 17th most popular comedian according to a yougov poll, that’s good right?

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Romesh Ranganathan’s rise to fame from Crawley maths teacher to comedian. His comedic skills have earned him many roles on our television screens over the years.

Although his first name is Jonathan, he goes by Romesh Ranganathan, the actor, comedian and presenter who suffers from right-sided ptosis, which caused a lazy eye as a child .

Romesh taught the subject at Hazelwick School in Crawley and The Beacon School in Banstead, Surrey. Whilst he was a mathematics teacher, he first started performing comedy.

Romesh was also a freelance rapper under the rap name Ranga and even reached the finals of the UK freestyle competition. In 2012, he then went on to become a professional comedian.

How do you feel like you’ve made the show your own?

I don’t feel like the show is mine or that I’m the star of it to be completely honest with you. I feel like the star is the actual show format itself. But I’m slightly less nervous going into this series because when we did the first one you go into it just not knowing how people are going to respond. So now that people have kind of accepted me being there it feels good. The last series I was getting my head around how the show works as I’d never hosted a quiz show before. So essentially I would describe doing the last series as being on the very edge of a panic attack for the entire duration, whereas now I’ve done the opposite thing where I almost feel too comfortable. Every now and again I’ll start getting nervous because I realise I’m not feeling panicked enough. So basically what I’m trying to tell you is there’s never a set up where I’m happy or satisfied with how things are going. Every day I’m waiting for a tap on the shoulder from somebody saying quietly ‘Do you want to just pack up and leave quietly?’. I had never done anything like this before so to be completely honest I wasn’t even one hundred percent sure if I was going to be any good at it last time. Everybody knows The Weakest Link, it’s basically an institution isn’t it? And so the second time round I’ve come in buzzing.

What makes The Weakest Link stand apart from other quiz shows? What do you think is behind the show’s enduring appeal?

Well first of all, if you’re a fan of quizzing you are going to love this because there’s so many questions. I mean, there’s just so, so many questions. The beauty of the show is you’ve not only got to answer the questions, but you’ve also got a bear in mind how many answers you’ve got in the chain. So you’ve got to decide whether to a bank or not, and you don’t want to do that too soon or leave it too late. Then on top of that you also don’t want your fellow contestants thinking that you’re the weakest link. So you’ve got all of these things playing on your mind the whole time. At the beginning of the show you see the contestants do their intros, and then we just dive straight into the quiz. It’s just so quick, and I will never tire of seeing their faces drop when we go into that first round. The feeling of jeopardy is high. They’re also working as a team but then turning on each other, so there are a lot of conflicting objectives. You have to backstab, then you have to work together and then backstab again. You can see the strategies changing as the game goes on where at one point they want to keep the strongest people in, because they want to get money for charity, but then also they realise that they’re going to get to a point where they’re up against those same people. I like it because it can lead to people answering even the simplest questions terribly.

What can viewers expect from this latest series? Are you bringing in any new format changes or shakeups?

The thing I’m most excited about is the set. It’s… kind of sexy. We’ve changed that up a bit, but the format doesn’t need a lot of tinkering with. The thing I would say, speaking personally as the host and on behalf of the team, is we sort of agonize about every kind of element of it, and we try to elevate that as much as possible. So there are tweaks that you might not be immediately aware of. But what we’ve tried to do is take all of the things that we did right last series, and then just give them a bit of a boost this series. I’ve become more comfortable at picking up what the narrative of the episode is this time around. You end up with lots of different stories in different episodes, and as we become more comfortable I think we’ve become better as a team at spotting those to give each episode its own identity.

What’s been your favourite episode to film? Do you have a favourite theme?

I would say the cosy and smiley world of daytime TV sits in sharp contrast to how the daytime TV contestants actually approach The Weakest Link. It was one of the tensest episodes we’ve ever done. The contestants are bantering with each other, but then the banter has got a bit of an edge to it and then you can see people starting to get their eyes on the prize. There are some friendships that have been put in jeopardy as a result of this show. Some people might walk out of there not being friends again and I’m left thinking ‘I wonder if they’re still going to chat after this…’ But that’s what I got into this game for really, I just want to bring all these nice friendships to an end. If I can do that, then I’ve done my job. I’m an agent of chaos, basically.

How do you think you would fare if you were a contestant on The Weakest Link?

I suffer from deep, existential angst. I’d be nervous about every single element of it. So not just only getting the questions right, but also how nice I’m being to the contestants and whether people like me or not. I don’t know how well I would take getting voted off as the Weakest Link. I just get too paranoid about what people think. I would end up trying to get people’s contact details so I can ask them after the show if it was something I did personally, or if it really was because I got a very simple question incorrect. When I’m watching their faces often in the middle of hosting the show I feel like shouting ‘Thank God that’s not me!’. I can feel their tension as I ask a question. Often the question starts with me saying what topic the question is on and sometimes you can see them give up as soon as they’ve heard the topic. Some people as soon they hear ‘sports’ you just see their faces drop.

So if you had to pick a topic what would be yours?

If The Weakest Link consisted exclusively of questions about East Coast hip hop between 1993 and 1998, I would absolutely smash it. I would be unassailable.

And are there any particular celebrity contestants that you’re excited to see on the show?

So I’m really looking forward to having Nihal Arthanayake on the show, and obviously, whenever there are comedians on I get excited. We’ve got Jessica Knappett on too, and we were just in the comedy show ‘Avoidance’ together where she plays a woman who splits up with me. Obviously, in the context of the show I’m completely impartial, but watching a mate undergo some severe stress always adds an extra element to it… And then there are also loads of people that I look up to on this upcoming series. Some fantastic sports people that play for England and have won World Cups that I always get a bit nervous around. It’s a really great range of different people and personalities.