"This is The Weakest Link - Hello!"

She strikes fear into the hearts of contestants and intellectually barren media folk, while most people with half a brain are bored to the back teeth of her. But for millions of viewers (although not nearly enough Radio Times readers, according to our ratings chart, hence this hastily-compiled feature to try and explain what you're all missing), Anne Robinson is the cruellest woman on television. The one-time comedy critic of The Independent will get paid more money for writing this PR-piece than he would have got for enduring Scott Capurro's latest pile of anti-Semitic shite at Battersea Jongleurs.

It's funny when you meet famous people with a reputation for being brusque or difficult onscreen. Off-duty, they turn out to be the most charming and disarming figures. Nobody round here can remember if Paxman was like that, but if he was, he'd be a prime candidate. Gordon Ramsay could be another one. Bette Davis - although, with her being dead, it's safer for me to write that she was probably a Premier League sow. Even though I never met her anyway.

Anyway, here's another one. Anne Robinson. No-nonsense, bespectacled, ginger, short, Robinson is the woman who has graduated from feebly confronting programme-makers for four-second bursts on Points Of View, to scowling at the mountains of fan-mail for her Watchdog assistants Alice Beer and Charlotte Hudson, and to behaving like a right cunt on The Weakest Link (BBC1, Tuesdays, and BBC2, all the time).

Of course, quizzes have been on television for some years now, like the Nazi death-camp ambience of Channel 4's Fifteen-To-One or the crass greedy get-rich-quick nothingness of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ITV. (RIP dear old Victor Meldrew, you see?) But The Weakest Link, being on the BBC, is a different beast, and well worth looking at, not simply because the BBC desperately needs a primetime hit that isn't EastEnders or Casualty, but also because the BBC desperately needs a primetime hit that isn't EastEnders or Casualty.

Anne tells me how The Weakest Link came about, but as I'm being paid by the word, I'd rather paraphrase what she said. Basically, it all came about when its two creators (neither of whom you will ever have heard of, seeing as you all probably fuck off to switch on the kettle the very nanosecond that any closing credits start rolling), were watching Fifteen-To-One one afternoon, and decided to all but copy it. Except that, rather than give away an earthenware pot from Ancient Egypt in the grand final for answering genuinely taxing general knowledge questions in under three seconds, The Weakest Link would reward competitors with money for, basically, being able to answer questions about the capital of Italy, and the difference between African and Indian elephants. "But they have to answer such junior school-standard questions really really quickly," points out Anne. "In fact they have to be nearly as quick off the mark as that lot on Fifteen-To-One. Oops."

Various pilots were tried out. In one, losing contestants were laughed at by their opponents upon their elimination. Most controversially, so yes get excited (erect or moist, if you like), was an untransmitted pilot where contestants had their heads shaved, and were imprisoned and starved for two months prior to recordings. "That didn't really work," reflects its host, regretfully, "because they just weren't capable of answering the questions properly, they just kept weeping or fainting, or just blithering like a bunch of mental patients." So they were all weakest links, then? "Yes, I suppose they were," she chuckles.

"Whenever I see we have a contestant who's actually clever, or intelligent, or knows anything at all about history or philosophy but who doesn't know who that the Mitchell brothers are in EastEnders, my heart leaps with joy. Because, being a media person, I am actually insecure as hell, and want to bring down people who actually know anything at all. As do the viewers. People hate intelligence. And they hate quiz shows where people are nice. I hate stagy television. It insults viewers' intelligence." She breaks off to answer her mobile and tell series producer Ruth Davis that she'll be at Television Centre in half-an-hour for the next recording looking suitably grave and cross. She hangs up, and continues: "I hate stagy television. It insults viewers' intelligence. You might want to print that bit twice, so that it lodges in their Altzheimered heads." She means you, OK? The readers. Got it?

So where next for The Weakest Link? One thing's for sure, it's certainly not yet time or the schedules to bid it a clipped "G'bye". ("People say that to me all the time - what unimaginative gits they truly are," is her sad but sage response.) With most of their big hits now history, the BBC is delighted that there's a Christmas special, and, in a predictable but desperate act, a special for Comic Relief in March 2001 that the Corporation has already dubbed "for charity and unwatchable, but might get us another million viewers who don't know what they're missing". There's even an EastEnders celebrity special rumoured to be on the way, in a cynical attempt to double the potential audience. But, muses Cruella de Robinson, "Can you imagine if I, and some Weakest Link contestants turned up in the Queen Vic for one episode?". A rubbish idea, so if any readers were going to send that in to the "And finally...." bit of the letters page, please don't bother. Not that it'll stop you.

Our time is up, and Anne is off again. She chooses not to wink, or even to say "G'bye" in an abrupt manner. She's actually polite. But that's because she's being interviewed for a national magazine piece in a Holland Park coffee house, not appearing on motherfucking television with some plebs.

Radio Times 9-15 December 2000