Darragh Ennis, well known from ITV’s The Chase, told David Hennessy about his upcoming quiz tour of Irish venues.
Darragh Ennis, well known as a Chaser on the hit ITV quiz show The Chase, brings his live quiz tour around Irish venues this month.
Darragh will visit seven venues across Ireland, giving audiences the chance to put their knowledge to the test for an evening of laughs, audience interaction as well as brain-teasing questions.
Just like his fellow chasers- Paul Sinha, Mark Labbett, Jenny Ryan, Shaun Wallace and Anne Hegerty- Darragh is a formidable quiz brain that contestants have to outrun with correct answers if they want to prevail on the show.
Ennis first appeared on The Chase as a contestant and performed so well he was brought on board in 2020 as one of The Chasers.
In 2017 Darragh appeared on the show and took £9,000 in his cash builder round and would play a stormer in his team taking home £6,300 between them which helped him to put a back door on his new house.
Now not only does Darragh’s house have the right number of doors on it, he also stands between the contestants and a big cash prize, but he just hopes that they don’t need the money as much as he did.
In fact, while other Chasers are known for their personas that include goading the contestants, Darragh is more forgiving mainly because he knows what it is like to stand where they are.
In his first time on the show, Darragh spoke about his involvement with Éire Óg GAA club in Oxford in his ice-breaking chat with host Bradley Walsh.
In fact, were it not for his involvement with Éire Óg and their quiz team, he most likely wouldn’t have been a contestant, let alone a Chaser, on the show.
Darragh took time to talk to The Irish World ahead of the upcoming tour.
You must be looking forward to the tour you have coming up?
“Yeah, it’s good fun doing these tours.
“We’re not back in studio for a few months (for The Chase) so I thought I’d do a few live quizzes.
“It’s a really good laugh.”
They sound like interactive nights that are fun for you as well as those attending..
“Absolutely, I make it a laugh.
“I changed the format away from pen and paper.
“It’s an interactive quiz with an app and the quicker you answer, the more points you get so if you look stuff up, you won’t win.
“I put in loads of stupid questions that are clearly jokes and if it’s a choice of four options, I’ll often put in a ridiculous option.
“I’ll put in ‘Who won the 400 metres at the Olympics?’ and I’ll put Brad in, I’ll put in something ridiculous so that people have a giggle.
“That’s what it is.
“It’s for a laugh.
“There’s no limit on how many people.
“You can do it on your own or you can have 10 people.
“It doesn’t actually matter because you have to answer quickly.
“It means having 10 people is actually a disadvantage rather than advantage.
“So people come in various groups but in between, I found there was a point where you have to let people go to the bathroom, you have to let people go to the bar so there was big gaps and the first time I did these I was like, ‘Oh well, seeing as we’re waiting around, does anyone have any questions for me?’
“And that’s now become a feature of the night so people ask me questions.
“A lot of people want to know stuff about TV and they try and trip me up with trivia questions from their specialist subjects and I love that.
“We have a laugh about it. It’s good fun.”
Would this live show be something that you would like to bring to the screen? Could it work on television?
“I would love more than you could imagine to do an Irish quiz show.
“I would love to have a regular quiz on Irish TV in a slot that people would sit down with their families to watch, asking Irish people Irish questions.
“I would love to host one.
“I would really love to be the host and to ask the questions and set it up.
“But I’ve never been able to get it off the ground.
“It’s really hard to get TV shows made.
“I’ve pitched some to RTE and Virgin and a few other independent companies but it just never got anywhere.
“I’d love to bring Blackboard Jungle back.
“I think Irish people love a quiz.”
I know you are based in Oxford so it must be great to get the chance to go back to Ireland..
“Yeah, I come back quite a bit but this isn’t very much of a holiday.
“This is very much work so it’s not very much time for meeting up with people.
“I’m doing the Dark Sky Festival in Mayo in October.
“They’ve asked me to give a scientific talk which is kind of cool.
“I’m only a quizzer now, I’ve been a scientist for most of my life so giving talks at conferences and stuff is much more my wheelhouse so I’m really looking forward to that.
“I get to pop over all the time.”
Of course you never expected to be well known as a Chaser, does it continue to be surreal in that way?
“It does in certain situations.
“My every day life is very, very ordinary and very dull.
“I bring the kids to school, cook dinner. All that stuff.
“People seem to think I live in a mansion.
“The weirdest thing is I went to New Zealand a couple of weeks ago and everybody knew who I was, and that was on the other side of the world.
“It’s a very popular show there, the UK version of The Chase.
“Everywhere I went, people were like going, ‘Ooh’, and they were stopping to watch me go by and that’s literally on the opposite side of the planet so that was very surreal.
“Then we did The Chase Around The World and for the final, we did a thing up in the Acropolis in Athens but we got to go there before it opened.
“No one gets to do that.
“I got to walk around this fabulous, historical site which is normally jammed with tourists first thing in the morning.
“It was great and things like that happening, it’s still just mad, it’s still bonkers.
“I met David James the former Liverpool and England goalkeeper and then I did a gig for Liverpool Football Club.
“I did a gig for their corporate partners and part of the fee was they gave me some VIP tickets to a game which was great so I brought my brothers along and we’re sitting there and David James was in the lounge doing a Q and A.
“I called him over and says, ‘Hey David, how’s it going?’
“My brothers are like, ‘Do you know everyone?’
“I said, ‘Actually, no. I only know about five celebrities and this is one of them’.
“It’s such a tiny part of my actual life.
“My real life is mostly very dull.”
After being a contestant yourself, do you get to spend time with the contestants when they are in?
“We’re very much not allowed to before the show.
“That reaction where they see us coming out and they’re surprised is real.
“We go to ludicrous lengths to do that.
“Brad isn’t allowed to see us or know who’s on because he might let it slip, he might even let it slip that it’s ‘him’ or ‘her’, just subconsciously, so we have to hide from Brad.
“So we’re not allowed before but afterwards I very much try to.
“It’s not always possible but nine out of 10 times, I’ll go and at least chat to the contestants for five minutes afterwards just to either congratulate or commiserate them.
“But we’re not allowed to take photographs or anything like that because it all has to be a secret.
“But I do try and have a chat with them.”
Is it good when you get the chance to get to hang out with the other Chasers?
“It’s really rare that we do.
“It’s really rare.
“This is the thing.
“A lot of people seem to think we live in a giant house or something.
“On a normal day for the regular show, three episodes are recorded and the person in the middle sees the other two for like five minutes.
“If you’re on show two, you might be able to have lunch with the person coming in after you but that’s it.
“We don’t see each other all that often at all.
“Beat The Chasers we hang around and that’s really good fun.
“The Chase Around The World I had a great time.
“Me and Jenny were in Barcelona and we went out for dinner and went out and got a cocktail and had a laugh and explored the city a bit.
“And the same in Athens.
“We had quite a bit of the day off so we were hanging around.
“But otherwise we don’t see each other all that much.”
How badly do you take it when you lose?
“It depends.
“I always want to win but if the team plays really well and beats me, I don’t mind half as much.
“What kills me is if I am bad.
“If I play badly or I make stupid mistakes, that really, really annoys me because I knew I should have won.
“There’s nothing wrong with being beaten by a good team and if they set a high score, more power to them.
“A good team should win.
“They really should.
“They’ve got the advantage of the numbers and the pushbacks and all that stuff.
“If I lose to a 21 or 22 or whatever, fine.
“I did the Soccer Aid special and they got 26 or something.
“They absolutely obliterated me.
“You just hold your hands up.
“When you get done by a better team, you get done but if I lose to a low score because I did really badly, that annoys me so I’m kicking myself all the way home.”
It’s not all about having super knowledgeable people, you also need that person who knows that ‘Justin Bieber’ is the answer..
“People don’t realise this: When you look at the teams on The Chase, they are four very different people always.
“There’s nearly always two men and two women.
“It’s nearly always people from different parts of the country and there’s usually a spread of ages of at least three or four decades.
“You’ve got a very, very big range of experience and everything.
“And teams that get everybody back are way more likely to win.
“They just are.
“I think they win 40% of games with all four and that goes down to about half that for three people.
“You also need people who are good under pressure and that is a very different thing.
“There’s a very, very nerdy subculture of quiz and they do international rankings and stuff.
“I’m nowhere near the top in either Ireland or the UK, I don’t even do them anymore.
“I actually don’t enjoy them but like Paul Sinha was ranked number one one year.
“They’re really, really intensive difficult things and I’m nowhere near the top but at least three quarters of the people who are higher up than me in the rankings would be rubbish at my job because they would freeze on camera or they need 10 seconds, they need to think.
“Firing out 20 answers in two minutes is not the kind of thing they’d be good at.
“A lot of people find that very difficult.
“That’s why you see people under pressure.”
Yeah it’s not as easy with the cameras on you as it is watching at home..
“I know it’s a cliche but it’s a cliche for a reason.
“It is really an awful lot easier on your couch.”
Getting involved with the local GAA team Eire Óg in Oxford led directly to you being a Chaser as you started with their quiz team, are you still involved with the club?
“Very tangentially.
“I tend to have a lot of stuff on and I’ve got small kids so my time to give is fairly slim but I do fundraisers for the GAA here.
“We do quizzes for both the club and Herefordshire/ Oxfordshire counties, and I’m still on the quiz team that was set up by the lads from the GAA club so on Thursday nights I go out and I do my Oxfordshire quiz.
“It’s great.”
What’s next?
“I’ve just finished writing my second book.
“It’s called Hold That Thought.
“It’s out in April with Penguin.
“It’s about memory so it’s a science book but a science book for normal people.
“I have to reiterate this to everybody because you say ‘science book’ and people run away.
“It’s written in normal language.
“It’s about how our brains store information and then what happens when you lose memory and how can we work on that and try and prevent it.
“So it’s all of the aspects of my life because I studied memory in the lab, I memorise things now, I study memory.
“Everybody has someone they know whose memory has been lost so it’s something I’ve wanted to write for a while.
“It will have a goldfish on the cover, I think.
“I suggested that because goldfish are much maligned.
“They’ve actually got a great memory, they’ve just got really bad press.”
It’s not true about their six second memory then?
“Not at all.
“There’s no basis for that whatsoever and the number varies depending on what country you’re from.
“The only basis for it was that we used to keep them in a bowl and there was no stimulation.
“They used to just swim round and round in circles and people went, ‘Oh, they’re just trying to see what’s on the other side of the bowl’, but it’s just because they were bored.
“They’ve been used in memory tests and their memory is actually quite good.”
With things like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s affecting so many, it sounds like a book that could really help people..
“Absolutely and there’s things that you can do.
“People who suggest, ‘Do this thing and you won’t get dementia’ are completely lying.
“But you can buy enough lottery tickets that you might just win the lottery.
“You can make your brain healthier.
“You can make it better.
“One of the key things with memory loss and loss of function is people who go deaf who don’t get hearing aids because they lose that input, they lose that stimulus and if you don’t make your brain work, it gets worse.
“You can take that to the next level by going, ‘Actually do you know what? Maybe I shouldn’t just be doing really passive things. Maybe I should try and do puzzles, read new things, learn new skills, learn a new language’.
“And keep doing it. Don’t give up as you get older.
“You should be doing more as you get older, not less and a lot of us, once we leave school, we just abandon everything and it’s a terrible idea.
“And unfortunately the old chestnut is if you eat healthily and do exercise, that does an awful lot as well.
“Nobody ever wants to hear that’s the solution but to be honest, it’s the solution to almost all health problems.”
The Menace Quiz with Darragh Ennis from The Chase comes to The Moat Theatre in Kildare on Wednesday 16 September, Whites Hotel in Wexford on Thursday 17 September, The Laughter Lounge in Dublin on Friday 18 September, Siamsa Tire in Tralee on Saturday 19 September, Monroes in Galway on Sunday 20 September, The TLT Theatre in Drogheda on Monday 21 September and Dolans Live in Limerick on Tuesday 22 September.
For tickets and more information, click here.
