The former host of The Weakest Link says this man makes her go weak at the knees

Anne Robinson’s comment about a comic may raise some eyebrows

TV star Anne Robinson has revealed she has a surprising crush who she loves watching on screen. The former host of The Weakest Link says she adores watching Lee Mack on ITV series The 1% Club and can’t get enough of him.

Anne told the Mirror: “I love The 1% club. I know people’s heroes are Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, but Lee Mack does it for me,” she says.

“He’s genuinely funny, and you watch him on anything else, he’s not just The 1% club, but he’s very quick witted. And when I was doing weakest link, I was quite fascinated by the fact that old comedians were much better at responding to me quickly and in a funny way than New Age comedians. I hate all this hugging on TV these days, and Lee Mack doesn’t do that. He only really needs to hug me.”

Anne Robinson has an unlikely crush and isn’t embarassed to admit it

Asked to confirm she means she finds Lee attractive, she adds: “It’s a deep crush. He actually looks even sexier with his glasses on.

“His mother and I went to school together. I think he is brilliant. We bumped into each other at Salford, at the BBC studios, and that’s when he said to me, you were at convent school with my mother. That’s how I know.”

Lee’s quiz show is a big success on ITV whilst Anne’s version of The Weakest Link ran for 12 years on the BBC. But she still remembers how the stand out hit almost didn’t happen for her.

“A fax came in from the BBC saying we’ve created a new game show, and we think Anne Robinson would be suitable, because she’ll look as if she can answer the questions.

“My manager said, ‘I’ll tell them, you’re too busy’. And I said, No, let’s take the meeting. And it’s a very good example, if girls are going for jobs to just explore them, take the meeting, even if you don’t think the job is for you.

Anne says she has a crush on Lee(Image: ITV)

“I think it’s Gary Player who says you have to work at being lucky. He used to say, the harder I work, the luckier I get. I think it’s also about taking risks. Yeah, you know, I don’t think I realised that when the Weakest Link started, that people were going to find me a horrible person. I just thought, Oh, this is original, and it’s me. And although I earned a great deal of money after having created the character, in fact, it was me.

“In the early days, it was quite tame, we got more and more naughty with it as time went on. Also because it was a successful show in the afternoon, I genuinely don’t think all those toffs at the BBC were particularly monitoring it. At the end of every round I’d say, Do you think we’ll get away with that? And we did because they weren’t watching television, they were too busy angsting about Question Time and Newsnight.”

She was speaking to the Mirror as she returns to TV in a new 5 documentary looking at prison sentences in the UK and asking if they need to change.

It is a return to the hard-hitting subject matter she covered as a journalist, and the determined campaigner we remember from Watchdog.

You Be The Judge examines four real life sentences with participants taking part in reconstructions and asked to compare how the judges came to the decision when it comes to sentencing.

“It’s certainly a topic that should have more publicity,” She says, sounding more like the serious and agitated Anne we are used to seeing on screen.

“Do people realise that prison isn’t working? Each government that comes along says they are going to be tougher on crime, and that means longer sentences, which also means the prison system is working less and less. We are 120% overcrowded in prisons, we don’t have enough officers and the prisons themselves are Victorian – it’s just not working. There are too many criminals and not enough staff. If you asked a prison governor why prisoners can’t spend their time learning to read and write, or learning a trade like carpentry, they will just tell you they don’t have the staff to make that happen.”