Survival of the fittest

AMERICANS were a little afraid of Anne Robinson even before The Weakest Link premiered on the NBC network last night. Her stern face glowers down on them from buses, billboards and magazine advertisements. NBC has spent millions of dollars trying to convince the US audience that this woman will give them "nightmares and weird dreams".

It is banking on the show rivalling the runaway success of another British export, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ABC. To that end, NBC has paid Miss Robinson a hefty £1 million for 13 shows, a salary that could increase sevenfold if it is a long-term ratings winner.

At this early stage, The Weakest Link and its host have received mixed reactions. The New York Times said: "It's style, not substance, that sets Weakest Link apart. Like a one-woman hit squad, Robinson peppers the contestants with rapid-fire questions and high-calibre insults...

"Draped in black designer garb that gives her the air of a chic Western gunslinger, her mouth pursed hard, Robinson breaks the mould of the blandly inoffensive TV personality."

But Tom Shales of the Washington Post was not won over. He wrote that "the show itself constitutes irritating harassment. It's also confusing, tiresome and gratuitously snippy.

"This show is Titanic with a twist," Shales concluded. "Not content with having hit one iceberg, the captain and crew set off across the Atlantic looking for others and ramming as many as they can find.

"The poor old Titanic, of course, never made it to these shores. Neither should have The Weakest Link."

If anything, Anne Robinson is ruder over there than she is over here. "It's of no interest to you, who the president is?" she asked one man who didn't know that the W in George Bush's name stands for Walker. Jeff, a personal trainer from New Jersey, was despatched with the words: "Alas, you worked on your body and not your brains".

One of the contestants who has faced up to the insultsover here and survived is George Rowe. Mr Rowe, a retired Rowntree's worker who now plays the pre-match and half-time music at York City, applied to take part when he saw an item about the show on Ceefax.

As a veteran of the show Fifteen To One, he sailed through two initial auditions, one by phone and one at a hotel in Leeds.

Finally the day of recording arrived. But there was no schmoozing with Anne Robinson in hospitality beforehand. The first they saw of her was on set as filming commenced.

"There were nine of us standing there. She walked in, and her words were: 'Hello, how are you, good luck'."

Mr Rowe was certainly not overawed. "I don't suffer from nerves - I don't know how to panic," he said. And back then, at the start of the series, Anne was less frosty.

"When I was on, during the early stages, she was nowhere near as rude as she is now. There were some cutting remarks but she wasn't offensive."

Mr Rowe was the last contestant to be voted off in that show. The remaining two said they had "bonded". Such nonsense prompts him to suggest that contestants should be ditched by computer, based on their performance.

"There's too many personality clashes deciding who is voted off, rather than judging it by ability.

"It's ridiculous that you answer all the questions right and they vote you off because of the colour of your shirt."

So did he enjoy the experience? "Let's say I wouldn't volunteer to go on it again."

Graham Cambridge is something of a TV quiz-show veteran, having appeared on nine. The highlight came when he was crowned Jeopardy champion.

This previous experience led The Weakest Link programme makers to invite him to take part in the new show. But nothing prepared the man better known as Eddie Vee, York's leading Elvis impersonator, for The Weakest Link.

"The atmosphere in The Weakest Link studios is totally black. Everything is blacked out. You don't see anything except Anne glaring at you.

"It's quite oppressive to start off with. You are worried about the questions, you are worried about if the other contestants like you or whether they will vote you off."

Before filming, producers had tried to prepare him for what lay ahead. They told him that "Anne would be very scary. Anne will have a dig at you. Don't be afraid to have a dig back.

"The only time I saw her smiling was when a woman went off the show singing, and she had never seen anything like that."

Eddie said that the host, described in some US newspapers as the "British dominatrix", "was not rude to me personally, but she was rude to the others". Indeed, after the show, Anne confided in him that she was a big Elvis fan, her favourite track being Always On My Mind.

"I don't think they realised how big she was getting," Eddie said. "They had created a monster. At all my Elvis shows, people just want to know 'what's Anne Robinson like?'"

What does he tell them? "I think she's really nice. I think she puts it on for the cameras."

Eddie has since corresponded by email with an American, Don Benn, who failed the audition to get on the show. He did see a tape of the first episode, however, and wrote: "We found the hostess/presenter (or whatever the heck you call her) to be very funny.

"My guess is that we found her to be funny because we were not the

ones on the receiving end of her insults."

Eddie appeared twice on The Weakest Link, becoming runner up on his first appearance. When he returned for a show featuring previous runners-up, he was quickly voted off.

So what would be his advice for US contestants? "I would take a couple of Mogadon or something like that to calm your nerves."

When Jim Jones appeared on the show, they told him: "Don't be frightened of her. Stand up to her."

He did just that - and walked away with more than £2,000. "I think I managed to hold my own, and didn't let myself be cowed by her," said Jim, a pensioner from Thorpe Willougby near Selby.

Mind you, Anne didn't hold back either. She knew he was a former member of Mensa, the organisation for people with high IQs. "She seems to hate that. She had a go at that, asking if I had any of the qualifications to be in Mensa."

Jim's advice to American Weakest Link contestants? "Just stand up to her and don't look in her eyes. I didn't do that. It might have been too terrifying. I looked at her mouth all the time."

Updated: 10:54 Tuesday, April 17, 2001