He’s been a mainstay on our TV screens for 40-odd years, and during that time Chris Tarrant has faced dozens of custard pies on Tiswas and a cheating Army major on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? – as well as a very public marriage break-up and a stroke. But filming his latest show he came up against a challenge he feared he couldn’t overcome.
Working on the final segment of his latest Extreme Railways series by Lake Victoria, Kenya, everything was going swimmingly until men with rifles arrived in Jeeps and ‘jabbered away angrily’, poking their fingers at Chris and his team.
It emerged that despite having permission to film, the local police thought Chris and his crew were spies, as there was a new military ship in the harbour that hadn’t yet been unveiled.
Chris Tarrant (pictured) was working on the final segment of his latest Extreme Railways series by Lake Victoria, Kenya, when men with rifles arrived in Jeeps and ‘jabbered away angrily’ at him and his team
‘Even though we couldn’t even see the ship, they insisted a crime had been committed,’ recalls Chris, 73. ‘They made us delete all our film and we thought that would be the end of it. But then they said, “Now we must go to the police station.”’
That’s when things got really frightening. ‘We got to the station and they took our passports and put us in a holding pen with these scary Kenyan guys in handcuffs who were scowling at us. We didn’t know what would happen.
‘We were worried we might end up having to stay in jail until it went to trial. They told us the officer who’d arrested us had gone home for the weekend. We were totally impotent. We weren’t even allowed to make a phone call.’
Chris and the crew were in jail for four hours when they were suddenly released. ‘We raced to the airport to catch our flights. It was terrifying. It’s a lovely country but I’m not sure I’ll ever go back.’
He’ll be back with Extreme Railways, though (there’s another series planned travelling around Siberia next year), because he has a genuine passion for it.
‘I’ve always loved trains,’ he says. ‘When I was young I had a book called The Great Railways Of The World and I would read about how the British changed the world by building all these railways.’
The series starts with a special episode looking at how trains affected the First World War, transporting troops from Britain and Germany all the way to the Front. Pictured: Chris visiting the WWI battlefields
In this series he travels through Romania and Turkey as well as Kenya, but it starts with a special episode looking at how trains affected the First World War, transporting troops from Britain and Germany all the way to the Front.
‘It was called “the first railway war”, and it was the trains that made the scale of the killing – 16 million dead – possible,’ he says. ‘As soldiers died they’d bring in yet more young men. It was like a travelling slaughterhouse.
‘We look at how one group of miners thought they were setting off on an adventure when they left Northumberland.
‘But at the Battle of the Somme, 2,500 out of 4,000 were killed. I visited a graveyard and all I could think was what a dreadful waste of life.’
Outside of the Extreme Railways shows, Chris is happily semi-retired. Although his biggest TV hit, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, has been rebooted with Jeremy Clarkson at the helm, Chris claims he hasn’t watched it.
I’m not sure about the show [about the Who Wants To be A Millionaire? scandal]. I saw the play it’s based on and I was horrified when they said the major wasn’t guilty. He was as guilty as sin!
‘I’m not particularly interested,’ he says. He’s far more interested in an ITV dramatisation of the show’s biggest scandal in 2001, when British Army major Charles Ingram won a million pounds, but was found to have been fed the answers via coughs from a friend in the audience, Tecwen Whittock, and the £1 million cheque was stopped.
Ingram, his wife Diana and Whittock were given fines and suspended sentences for deception.
‘Michael Sheen’s playing me, and I met him at a function a few weeks ago,’ says Chris. ‘He said, “I’ve been staring at tapes of you!” I think he’ll be brilliant but I’m not sure about the show. I saw the play it’s based on and I was horrified when they said the major wasn’t guilty. He was as guilty as sin!
‘A month later he was arrested again for an insurance scam. I don’t know what the TV show will do, but the guy was a crook.’
Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways is back on Monday 25 November, 9pm, Channel 5.