A YORK woman starred in the anniversary edition of a popular ITV quiz show.

Anne Taylor, who lives in ‘the beautiful city of York’ - as it was called by Bradley Walsh - first applied for The Chase during the pandemic with the encouragement of her daughters Abigail, 16, and Edith, 13.

According to Anne, she received the call to take part in the show at the beginning of this year – originally ignoring the call thinking it was spam. She only discovered the call was from The Chase casting team after checking her voicemail.

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The process then began with a round of four to five phone interviews – covering everything from Anne’s personal life and background to her general knowledge – before she joined in a Teams interview with other potential candidates, covering similar topics and the question of what she would do with any prize money.

After being chosen, Anne was told that there may a bit of a wait until she was called up for her episode – but she was selected for a ‘glitzier’ episode to be filmed in May and required contestants to bring multiple outfit changes, including sparkly clothes.

On arriving at Elstree Studios in London for the shoot, the group of contestants – Paul, Anne, Darragh, and Jenny – were told they were there for the 15th anniversary show – an episode named ‘The Chase: Double Trouble’ with host Bradley Walsh and featuring contestants named after the chasers.

This saw contestants in ‘double trouble’ – up against the two original chasers, The Beast (Mark Labbett) and the Dark Destroyer (Shaun Wallace).

The first contestant was Paul, who answered seven questions correctly and brought back the middle offer of £7,000.

Anne was second up, facing up against The Beast and smashing her cash builder round before also bringing back the middle offer of £7,000.

The team with host Bradley WalshThe team with host Bradley Walsh (Image: Provided)

The others, Jenny and Darragh, also made it home with Jenny taking the minus offer of -£2,000 and Darragh adding £5,000 - allowing the team to enter the final chase with a total prize fund of £17,000.

This gained the approval of Bradley Walsh, who said: “It’s nice to have a full house on our anniversary episode.”

The group chose ‘Set B’ for their final chase questions – a choice which also gave them The Beast for their final chaser – and meant they were able to get enough pushbacks to beat Mark and win a total of £4,250 each.

Anne, who watched her episode twice with two sets of friends and family, said: “It was really scary but in a good way and such good fun!

“One chaser is a lot but competing against two makes it so special.”

With her prize money, Anne intends to tick items off a bucket list of activities with her daughters – this includes hot air balloons and mastering water sports.