Broadcasting icon Chris Tarrant, 78, announces end of 50-year career: ‘I’ve stopped’
Former Who Wants to be a Millionaire host Christ Tarrant, 78, has announced he is ending his half-a-century long career in broadcasting.
Tarrant, who commanded the radio waves and TV screens for decades, told the Sun: “I’ve stopped.”
“I mean I think lockdown really, you just started to get everything in a bit perspective and I thought, I’ve done this thing for 50 years,” he explained.
The 78-year-old confessed: “I don’t need the money, without sounding silly. So I was thinking, why am I still doing this?”
Tarrant’s last TV full TV endeavour was six series of Extreme Railways for Channel 5.
Outside of that, TV appearances have been scarce from Tarrant in recent years.
Last year, he appeared on Alan Titchmarsh’s Love Your Weekend and shared his opinions as a talking head on Britain’s Favourite Sitcoms.
The 78-year-old explained at the the TRICS Christmas lunch that his decision allowed him to do: “lots of things that I’ve been putting off instead that have been great.”
“Like, last year, I went on safari with my two eldest grandkids, which you just never have time to do that stuff,” he explained.
Tarrant revealed: “My wife Jane and I’ve just come back from Borneo, where I’ve always wanted to go and I’ve just come back from photographing bears in Alaska.”
Tarrant concluded definitively: “So, why the hell would I go to work?”
The broadcasting icon is most known for his hosting ITV’s hugely successful quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
The 78-year-old presented the show from 1998 until 2014, filming hundreds of episodes.
He is famed for asking terrified contestants: “Is that your final answer?”
Tarrant got his start in showbiz in 1974, co-presenting the ITV children’s program Tiswas with Sally James.
The children’s entertainment classic continued with Tarrant until 1981, when he made a move to radio.
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Tarrant moved to Capital Radio in 1984, hosting a host of programs from the breakfast show to one-off specials.
As of 9:00 am on 2 April 2004, Tarrant had hosted 4,425 shows in his 20 years at the station.
On his shows, he had given away prize money worth £3.5 million across a variety of radio quizzes and games.
It was there that the icon first coined his infamous disarming catchphrase: “Is that your final answer?”
