The Chase has welcomed a new Chaser into the fold, with the introduction of Darragh “The Menace” Ennis.
Here’s everything you need to know...
Who is Darragh Ennis?
Darragh is a 40-year-old Oxford-based scientist who hails from Dublin.
He will be fitting in his new TV commitments around his day job.
He is currently studying how brains work and how memories are made at a molecular level.
“We use very advanced microscopes to study fly brains and their nervous system as a model to better understand how the human brain works,” he explained.
He initially appeared on the show as a contestant
He first took on Paul Sinha on The Chase in 2017, scooping an impressive £9,000 for his team, who later all took minus offers from the Chaser, meaning his overall total was depleted.
The episode caused a stir online, with #JusticeForDarragh trending on Twitter after it aired.
Darragh’s Chaser name will be The Menace
And he didn’t actually know what it would be until he walked out on set for the first time.
“I like it, it’s good,” he said. “I can’t wait for the merchandise. My friend has already said he wants me in Toby Jug form.”
His Chaser attire sees him sport a velvet paisley print jacket and bolo tie
“I had originally said that I genuinely didn’t care about the costume and that I would come out in a chicken suit if they wanted to – which I think they were tempted to do for a moment in time,” Darragh said.
They played around with a few different things. The tie is a bolo tie, a kind of Wild West thing. They found this really cool paisley material for the jacket - I really like the jacket.”
Darragh’s weakest areas are cricket and popular culture
“I stopped paying attention to music around 2005,” he said.
He cites his best subject as history as his mother was a history teacher.
He has a special trick for remembering facts
Darragh uses “little songs, rhymes and poems” to help him memorise things.
“I wasn’t doing it too much until I started on the show. I’ve found it’s a good way to memorise positions of things like capital cities,” he revealed.
Darragh is the first new addition to the Chasers since 2015
He will become the sixth Chaser on the popular ITV quiz show, joining formidable quizzing pros Jenny ‘The Vixen’ Ryan, Shaun ‘The Dark Destroyer’ Wallace, Mark ‘The Beast’ Labbett, Anne ‘The Governess’ Hegerty and Paul ‘The Sinnerman’ Sinha.
The Chase launched in 2009 with just Mark and Shaun before Anne joined the group a year later, with Paul added in 2011. Jenny then became the show’s fifth resident Chaser in 2015.
But there’s no rivalry with his new co-stars
“We’re mildly competitive, but we are more of an encouraging team that works together, rather than trying to impress each other,” he insisted.
“Personally, I want to reach certain goals. I want to be good at this. So I do work quite hard at that. I do a lot of studying and I do work at it. Impressing myself is the main thing, I think.”
His first Final Chase didn’t go exactly to plan
“I got a few wrong, five wrong. At least two of those were because I really wasn’t paying attention to the questions properly,” he said.
However, he still managed to defeat his opponents, saying it was important to get a first win.
He said: “It’s like Heathrow Terminal 5, when it wasn’t going well the first day, everyone just wrote it off. It’s a thing that humans do, if something doesn’t work the first time people get a bias against you and they keep that in their mind always, no matter what the evidence is afterwards. So it was good to get a first win.”
He already rates his chances on I’m A Celebrity
Asked if he could follow co-star Anne Hegerty into the jungle, Darragh said: “I’d probably be very good at I’m A Celebrity because in my day job I work with insects and I have no fear of creepy crawlies whatsoever. But I am terrified of heights so I wouldn’t be able to jump out of any helicopters.
“But I have no ambitions at the moment. I’m too busy, I’ve got a job on top of being a Chaser.”
The Chase airs weekdays at 5pm on ITV.
