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America is weakest link { May 16 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Thursday 16 May 2002
ANNE ROBINSON: AMERICANS ARE DUMB
EXCLUSIVE: Quiz Queen says: Only 5% of them have passports and they act as if Dubya's Einstein
By Ros Wynne-Jones
ANNE Robinson, the flame-haired quiz show dominatrix, is not impressed. The Weakest Link is to be shelved in the United States as a result of declining audience figures and Anne, who has made no secret of her contempt for American intellect, is taking no prisoners.
America, You are the Weakest Link, Goodbye! "On one US show I asked a young soap star how many minutes there were in half an hour," Anne says, wearily. "And she said 60."
Nor is she much impressed by their leader. "I saw George Bush at a benefit concert actually waving at Stevie Wonder," she says, incredulously. "Someone had to tell him 'he can't see you'." Anne wanted to mention the incident on a US chat show but, post- September 11, criticising Dubya was deemed unpatriotic.
"Suddenly, you couldn't say anything about him," she says. "Before September 11, I remember asking on TV if Bush knew where Europe was. Then suddenly, you had to act as if he was Einstein."
Does she think Americans are definitively more stupid than the Brits? "You have to remember that only five per cent of Americans have passports," she says. "That explains a lot..."
Fresh from the startling ratings success of last Saturday's Test The Nation, 57-year-old Anne is on razor-sharp form.
Dressed in her trademark black with her waspish red hair cropped short, she is reclining on a sofa at her Cotswolds home with the air of a Black Widow spider that has just eaten a particularly delicious suitor.
"The athlete Jonathan Edwards, who won the celebrities' test with 126 points, has a physics degree," says Anne, a former Daily Mirror executive. "And he was definitely the right winner because he was the best looking there - the one you would have wanted to sleep with."
COMPETING with the likes of newspaperman Andrew Neil and EastEnders' Ian Beale - Adam Woodyatt - you'd hope so.
"Adam was the most competitive," Anne reveals. "We said we'd only reveal the top three celebrity results, so as not to embarrass anyone. But he was desperately looking for the card with all the results on and was last seen scrabbling around under the podium."
For 30 minutes during the show, unbeknown to Anne, her earpiece link to the directors went dead - without it, most hosts would be reduced to jelly.
"They normally interrupt you all the time, so I thought that if they were quiet it must mean the show was going well. It was only when I saw them gesturing wildly that I knew something was up."
Her face creases with pleasure as she shows the new, cuddly Anne. "I wore pink for Test The Nation," she says, brightly. "It was such a relief. My new softer image."
She takes me up to her wardrobe, to view the outfit. Next to it is a soft beige one, for a forthcoming appearance on the Jonathan Ross show.
The black designer interrogators' outfits for The Weakest Link are at Pinewood Studios. NBC, the US network that makes Weakest Link in America, has also bought up Test The Nation, so a soft pastel wardrobe may soon be required there, too.
"Of course, the real test will be whether Americans can concentrate for an hour," says Anne, lapsing into her old ways. Descended from a long line of North Wales Wynne-Jones, I have to take issue with her over her anti- Welsh comments on BBC2's Room 101.
"All I can say is that we did a Welsh-only Weakest Link and they won the least amount of money ever," Anne retorts.
Fortunately for the Valleys, she has a new target. Last year she upset Americans by declaring that few US citizens knew anywhere outside of Idaho - and she despairs of her Stateside contestants.
"You can always tell Texans," she says. "They wear big, bright, multi- coloured sweaters. Every time I see one, I think God's made another rainbow. Then you get the clean-shaven Right-wing Christian types. The Jews on our team are always laughing at them saying: 'He wouldn't have let us hide in his attic.'"
She does, however, have a kind word for Bill Clinton. "I think he did womankind a great favour. He proved that giving your boss a blow job in the photocopying cupboard is not dating. Nor is it clever. Throughout history, the disappointment of women is that they are attracted to power." Anne confesses that her dream is to run a Clever Women's Group, where she would train young women not to be so bloody silly. What would be on the curriculum?
"Don't sleep with them on the first date - wait till the sixth. And do not ring him. And why do women always fall for irresponsible, unfaithful men?" she asks. "They need to learn to like dull men and treat them properly."
All this seems a bit harsh on John Penrose, Anne's gentle, long- suffering other half, agent and business manager.
"Well, you couldn'thave two of me in this small a space, could you?" Anne says, gesturing across the room towards the spluttering open fire. She has a point.
SHE is truly, madly wonderful... but times two?
A Weakest Link Lookalikes Special, which featured an Anne lookalike among the contestants, terrified the audience.
"I introduced her saying: 'This is your worst nightmare.' Anyway,you have to have someone on crap control."
By that, she means someone like her husband, who'll sit at home and judge the fine line between being a celebrity and an ego-maniac. "Vanessa Feltz could do with one," she says, smiling innocently. "And Esther Rantzen." The key to "crap control" is that Anne is not taken overly seriously in her own household. There is a Weakest Link quiz book next to the toilet.
The carpet is littered with Anne Robinson dolls from a US promotion, chewed up andspat out by her dogs.
When I tread on a doll accidentally, it barks: 'You are the Weakest Link, Goodbye!' As Anne laughs, John whacks another doll's face on the table. Mini- Anne yelps: "You could fill an encyclopaedia with all they do not know!"
He winks. "You can see what we get up to when we're a bit fed up of Annie," he whispers. Returning to the sitting room, I can see that Anne has a red welt on her face and I worry that the doll has voodoo properties. But there is an innocent explanation. She has just been swimming in her heated pool, which features an underwater stereo.
Rather eccentrically, she swims every day in mask and snorkel, which has left the red mark. "The snorkel is wonderful," she says.
"You don't get a neck ache doing breast-stroke. And I can listen to the Today show underwater."
Anne is more than happy to send herself up but agrees she isn't really as tough as her Black Widow exterior, while publishing her warts-and-all autobiography, Memoirs Of An Unfit Mother, last year, laid some demons to rest.
"I had felt that my past was always up for grabs," she says. "I spent years being terrified that someone would find out about the custody battle."
A former alcoholic, Anne lost custody of her daughter Emma in the 70s, through being what the courts called an "unfit mother".
"I spent years being ashamed," she adds. "After writing the book I felt relieved. I've always thought that fear is the worst drug of all. It makes people behave so badly."
Emma, now a New York radio presenter and executive, has chosen not to read the book but is used to seeing her mother's face on billboards.
The two are now firm friends and 30- year-old Emma has just bought her mother an unusual present.
So what do you give a woman who has everything? "A llama," says Anne. "Apparently, I'm now sponsoring one in a developing country."
Anne, who gave up drink and cigarettes years ago, is on a serious high. NBC may have shelved Weakest Link but it will still run there until September. "That's 82 shows - which equals four series of Friends."
Anne has become what US media circles call "a break-out personality". She is in talks over a potential US chat show, Anne Talks Tough. Her autobiography is out in paperback next month. She has even been invited to apply for the post of Rector at St Andrew's University, where she may at last get the chance to advise bright young women.
Outside on the drive, the studio car is waiting to whisk her to Pinewood, where more hapless Weakest Link contestants will be led into the studio like lambs to the slaughter. "What do I want next?" she laughs. "I want to lose six pounds by this evening." Goodbye!
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