Anne Hegerty, a quizzing icon, has claimed that her traumatic beginnings had a significant role in her success as a star on The Chase.
The 65-year-old, sometimes known as The Governess, has been a regular on the famous ITV show and has even travelled to Australia for the Australian edition.
While many people admire Anne’s keen wit and even sharper intelligence, she has confessed that she battled to obtain approval from her parents.
Despite her memory abilities, The Chase superstar believed she ‘couldn’t achieve anything’ growing up, which was partially due to her undiagnosed autism.
‘I grew up feeling like I couldn’t really do anything,’ she told 7News. ‘My mother never told me I could accomplish anything. My dad was a complete incompetent in all walks of life.’
She has stated that her failure to recognise autistic symptoms in young ladies made her look unstable and high maintenance.
This made the London-born superstar feel like she needed to prove herself, so she worked as a journalist, ghostwriter, and, eventually, quizmaster.
Anne received her diagnosis in 2003, at the age of 45, and dramatically changed her life, taking up quizzing as a Chaser in series two.
The I’m A Celeb star continued: ‘I didn’t really have a particularly good childhood. The music was better, but there’s not much else that was better when I was a kid, to be honest.
‘There are so many people my age who sort of look back nostalgically to earlier times. And I look at them and think, “No, you think it was better because your joints didn’t ache.”‘
When Anne was 12, her father left their family soon before Christmas, leaving a letter that said, ‘For Christmas 1970, one house free from spouse.’
When discussing her family life with Shaun Wallace, she described it as a nuclear family that erupted.
Speaking about her life in the spotlight, Anne added: ‘I always felt I have a brain like a Rolodex. If I know it, then it’s there. There’s one thing I can do and it turns out people like watching me do it. That gives you a bit more confidence.’
Since 2010, she has been a regular on The Chase, among various other quizzing brains, including the founding combo Mark ‘The Beast’ Labbett and The Dark Destroyer.
In a January 2021 edition of The Chasers’ Road Trip: Trains, Brains, and Automobiles, Anne’s IQ was discovered to be an impressive 137 out of 161.
For a royal twist, she is Queen Elizabeth II’s 19th cousin and the 20th great grandchild of King Robert the Bruce, who reigned as King of Scots from 1306 until his death in 1329.
Source My Celebrity Life.