Anyone who watched The Weakest Link in the early 00s remembers how ruthless Anne Robinson was; ripping into contestants for their looks, intelligence and professions, and taking immense pleasure in kicking them off the show after humiliating them.
Well, times have changed since then and there’s no way Anne Robinson could get away with saying those things now. In fact, Anne has now revealed that she turned down two offers from the BBC to return as host, precisely because they won’t allow her to take the p*ss out of contestants anymore:
‘Wokeness has taken the heart out of comedy. Times have really changed.
I wouldn’t want to be a cheesy game-show host, and that is what the BBC wanted.
Where’s the fun if you can’t ask, “What do you do when you’re not eating?” or “Have you had that hair cut for a bet?”’
Look, some of the stuff Anne Robinson used to say to guests was bang out of order. Who could forget this vicious (and classic) clip below…
A warm welcome back to daytime TV to Anne Robinson, one of life’s good guys pic.twitter.com/QWDrsH6ZOS
— Alex Hess (@A_Hess) February 15, 2021
Generally though, I have to agree with Anne’s sentiment. The only reason anyone used to tune into the Weakest Link was to hear Anne ask things like “are you a few washing machines short of a launderette?”, which is tame enough but still a funny insult. The idea that that’s too offensive for the BBC in 2022 is a bit sad really, so I get why Anne Robinson wouldn’t want to return to a toned-down version of the show she made famous.
This isn’t the first time Anne has had something to say about wokeness. She recently claimed she was ‘fed up’ with it after a contestant on Countdown asked her not to use the word ‘foreign’.
