Cliff Notes – Chase star with surprising new job away from ITV quiz show
- Anne Hegerty, known as The Governess on The Chase, is set to return to pantomime, performing as the Fairy Rose in “Beauty and the Beast” at Scarborough Spa in December 2025.
- This marks her continued involvement in panto, a venture she began in 2014, with various roles across the UK, including productions of Cinderella and Aladdin.
- The announcement was made by Scarborough Spa, highlighting her popularity and the inclusion of other notable performers, such as Jake Quickenden as Gaston.
The Chase star with surprising new job away from ITV quiz show
It’s been revealed that a star of The Chase has recently landed a surprising new job away from the ITV quiz show.
Anne Hegerty, 66, better known as The Governess on the Bradley Walsh general knowledge series, has been part of The Chase for 16 years.
Since 2010, she has sometimes taken on other work in between recordings, even appearing on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in 2018.
Among those other opportunities Anne has taken up is her history of performing in Christmas pantomimes up and down the country since 2014.
And it’s been announced this week that her surprising job away from The Chase is being picked back up again, with Christmas 2025 shows already booked in.
The news was broken by the X account of the Spa Hall in Scarborough, which is an Entertainment, conferencing, and wedding venue in the north east town.
Anne Hegerty is trading The Chase for Scarborough
In a post, the account said: ‘We are delighted to announce that back by popular demand for Beauty and the Beast will be The Governess, Anne Hegerty!’
The Scarborough Spa then promised more star names, with TV presenter Jake Quickenden among them, playing the role of Gaston in the production.
In the refashioned Beauty and the Beast, Anne – ‘back by popular demand’ – will be playing the Fairy Rose, otherwise known as the Enchanted Rose in the 1991 film.
‘Back by popular demand’ (Picture: X/@scarboroughspa)
It’s not the first time she’s tried her hand at panto (Picture: Anthony Devlin/Getty)
The Enchanted Rose acts as something of a clock for the Beast, with each falling petal reminding him of the time he’s got – or hasn’t got – left to find his true love.
Scarborough Spa’s productions of Beauty and the Beast will run from December 6, 2025 all the way through to New Year’s Day in 2026.
Despite this seeming like a surprising turn for Anne, the truth is that, when she’s not playing The Chase as The Governess, she’s been performing in panto for years.
It’s not her first rodeo – and it’s not her first panto either
Starting in 2014, she first appeared in a Northwich production of Cinderella, starring as one of the wicked stepmothers at the Cheshire-based Grange Theatre.
Later on, she starred as the Empress of China in a re-telling of Aladdin in Torquay, before trading the south coast for the north east in a Middlesbrough-born production of Sleeping Beauty.
In 2022, she revealed that she started to be approached by panto directors after setting up a Twitter account – back when it was still called Twitter and relatively new.
‘I did panto [but] I was really fairly terrible the first time. I was technically bad, I used to miss cues, so I stumbled through it. Then got offered more and I’ve been doing it ever since,’ she told the Swindon Advertiser.
She continued: ‘I enjoy doing the panto, it’s a chance to act and a chance to sing, a chance to act, a chance to be funny more than one gets in The Chase.’