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Anne Robinson
Birth name Anne Josephine Robinson Born September 26, 1944 in Crosby, Liverpool, England Age 62
Statistics Occupation TV presenter, Game show presenter Gender Female Marital status Married Ethnicity English/Irish[citation needed] Net worth £60 million[citation needed] Notable credit(s) Watchdog (BBC) Weakest Link (BBC - British version, NBC - American version)

This article is about the British television hostess. For the American actress see Ann Robinson.

Anne Josephine Robinson (born September 26, 1944) is a well-known British television presenter and television game show hostess who is most famous for hosting the BBC game show, The Weakest Link which coined her the name 'Queen of Mean'. She was also one of the presenters on the long-running British news investigative series, Watchdog, from 1993 to 2001.

Contents 1 Career 1.1 Early career 1.2 Television 2 Other activities 3 Background 4 See also 5 External links

From 1966-67, she was the first young female reporter at the Daily Mail. Her work was uncomfortable for her when she met and fell in love with the deputy news editor, Charlie Wilson, and the two got married in 1968. In 1970 the couple had a daughter (Emma Wilson), who's now a British radio disc jockey and has also hosted a game show in the U.S. on the Nickelodeon network. In 1973, the marriage disintegrated after Robinson became an alcoholic. That same year, both Robinson and Wilson initiated divorce proceedings.

She worked for the Sunday Times between 1968 and 1977 and from 1980 worked for the late, controversial magnate, Robert Maxwell on the staff of the Daily Mirror. During her career as a British newspaper journalist, she developed a flair for writing tabloid headlines.

She began appearing on BBC television during the 1980s, on programmes such as Points of View and Watchdog. She also presented a weekly show on BBC Radio 2 on Saturday mornings, which ran from 1988 - 1993. She returned to the station briefly in 1996, sitting in for Jimmy Young on the Lunchtime slot for 2 weeks.

Robinson is best known for hosting the British version of The Weakest Link. Robinson's icy persona, monotone voice and her usage of personal questions became infamous on The Weakest Link. Her repeated icy utterance, "You are the weakest link — goodbye!" became a catchphrase soon after the show started in 2000. Robinson has also hosted the United States NBC primetime version of the show, which has since ceased production. Before she hosted Weakest Link, in the 1990s, she was also one of the presenters of the long-running news programme, Watchdog.

Currently, she also hosts the BBC's Outtakes programme, Outtake TV, and the BBC's interactive quiz, Test the Nation. In 2001, Robinson published her autobiography, Memoirs of an Unfit Mother, in which she describes her former drinking problem.

Robinson also hosted an episode of Have I Got News For You in 2002 where she was baited slightly by Ian Hislop because of her admiration for Robert Maxwell. The programme also showed a clip from a 1995 episode where Paul Merton made fun of her wink. She has also appeared on Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car, which is a recurring segment on the BBC Two motoring programme Top Gear.

In the US in 2005, she made a guest appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where Robinson talked about herself admitting that she was an unfit mother. In addition, Robinson appeared as "Anne Droid" in a 2005 episode of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who in the episode Bad Wolf. In the episode, Robinson played a robot version of herself as the Weakest Link host, who appeared to disintegrate the losers on the show. She later appeared alongside Anne Droid on a Weakest Link: Doctor Who Special, in which she unplugs the robot. She also hosted a satirical news-based chat show on BBC One called What's the Problem with Anne Robinson?, beginning in 2005.

In 2006, Robinson was ranked number 46 in the ITV poll of TV's 50 Greatest Stars. On 23 April 2006, The Sunday Times Rich List named Anne Robinson as one of the UK's richest media personalities, worth £60 million (USD 112 million). She also appeared in the 2004 and 2005 rich list. Robinson was spoofed on the television comedy impressions show Dead Ringers.

Robinson caused a furore when she appeared on the comedy show Room 101 on March 5, 2001, and made derisive comments about Welsh people. Comments such as "what are they for" were supposedly based on dislike for people speaking in Welsh around the market stall operated by her mother during her childhood. She later apologized for the comments and agreed to do promotional work for the Wales Tourist Board to encourage people to visit the country.

In the same show she put comedian Ben Elton into Room 101 in protest at his hosting the Royal Variety Performance. She argued that he should be sent to the room "for being a total and utter hypocrite and going back on everything he stood for in the 80s and 90s". This despite the fact that she herself was a journalist on the left leaning Daily Mirror in the 1980s, but nowadays says she considers Margaret Thatcher to be the second greatest ever Briton.[1]

Born in Crosby, Lancashire, England, she is of Irish Catholic descent, and attended Farnborough Hill School, which is a Roman Catholic Convent Boarding School in Hampshire. Her mother, Anne Josephine Robinson Sr., was a successful agricultural businesswoman from Ireland, where she was the manager of a market stall. Robinson was hired as a chicken gutter during the holidays before taking office jobs at a clerical post at a law firm. Robinson has also admitted that she is a recovered alcoholic.[2]

• Weakest Link

• Anne Robinson at the Internet Movie Database