Mark Labbett has become one of the most popular faces in the game show world and fans of The Chase just can’t seem to get enough of him. One of the most sassy chasers, the Beast has had an exciting life, including his marriage to his second cousin, an incredible transformation and a shocking diabetes diagnosis.
Mark Labbett has been striking fear into the hearts of contestants on ITV’s The Chase since it started in 2009. Now, he's back with Beat The Chasers, and is scarier than ever.
Last year, working on the show’s American version, the 56-year-old former maths teacher earned over £1 million. He said "It was more than I earned in the first 49 years of my life.”
He is paid large sums for appearances and said to The Mirror: “I’ve done a lot of gigs up and down the country, things like bingo hall and pub quizzes and it’s great fun but I can safely say on any given gig I get my arse felt about four times, it’s at every gig and that’s not just women.
“I’ve had women who have pulled my face on to kiss them, they sit down on my knees and I’ve had to throw them off. The worst one was I was wearing jeans and the woman grabbed my meat and two veg.
“I was trying to chat up another lady. If I’d done that to her I would be in the cells. I’ve got the female equivalent of those men that always paw women.”
Mark has toured the world with The Chase and his co-stars Anne Hegerty and Shaun Wallace. He has also been a chaser on the Australian version of the show.
Mark split from his wife of six years in 2020 and they co-parent their son together. He said he is now married to his job, adding: “I’m single now. We are separated but we get on really well, we co-parent. I promised to look after her and I promised to look after my kid.”
In 1965, Mark was the first born child of Carolyn and Jon Labbett and he has two younger brothers Paul and Philip. The family lived in Tiverton, Devon, before moving to Monmouthshire, Wales, in 1998 which was soon followed by another transition to Newport in 2003.
Education wise, the TV star has obtained many certificates, having received a Master of Arts degree in mathematics at Exeter college in Oxford and a legal CPE and LPC qualifications from the University of South Wales.
Initially Mark began his career in Farnborough as a secondary school supply PE teacher before taking up another teaching opportunity in South Wales.
Mark took up a job with British holiday park Butlins, which is actually where his love of quizzing arose. To think, if he hadn’t worked there, he might not be on our screens today.
Sadly, his £55 wage packet each week wasn't enough to make do. Instead, Mark would gamble with a small amount of change each week, playing the quiz machines on site which paid dividends.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2007, he explained: "I really enjoyed playing and it was also lucrative. At the beginning of the week, I banked my £55 wage, except for £3 or £4 which I played on the machines. By the end of the week, I'd have £200 in coins."
After using the machines as a cash injection, he obtained a breadth of knowledge and was able to strike up a deal with Redtooth quiz company and wrote trivia questions for them. In 1999, the TV icon better known as The Beast made his first on-screen appearance on Mastermind answering questions in relation to the Olympic games.
Fast forward one year and he was back, this time tackling the specialist subject - cartoon series The Simpsons. 2000 proved to be a busy year for Mark, featuring on Countdown too but narrowly lost his first match during a crucial conundrum.
His TV career is endless and includes BrainTeaser, Face Off, SUDO-Q and Millionaire Live - where he bagged himself £32,000. As a result of his persistence and determination, Mark was ranked UK's 17th top quizzer before he had even found fame on the ITV game show.
Fans can be forgiven for assuming the moniker is down to his towering 6ft 7in height. But one Twitter user has posted another explanation for why Mark calls himself ‘The Beast’, and it’s actually because it translates to ‘la bête’ in French - similar to his surname.
He wrote: "I have watched almost every episode of The Chase since it started airing in 2009. And I am only TODAY learning that Mark Labbett is called The Beast cos ‘la bête’ is french for ‘the beast’."
Our minds are officially blown.
After five years in the limelight Mark married Katie, who was 27 years his junior. The pair also share a three-year-old son Lawrence who they prefer to keep away from the cameras and social media.
Mark and Katie didn't realise until after they began their relationship that they were actually related to one another. It became apparent to the pair that their dads were first cousins - making them both second cousins.
During an episode of Loose Women, Mark told the panel: "It wasn't something we were aware of at the time - it was one of those things that happened."
Their marriage was eventually put under strain, blaming their 27-year age gap and the lockdowns. Mark and Katie attempted to give it another go, deciding to try an open marriage. But, despite their best attempts to keep their family together, it all became too much and the pair agreed to formally divorce last year, reported The Sun.
Following his marriage breakdown, Mark went on a health journey and the pounds have just been falling off. Having shed over 10 stone in weight fans speculated that his drastic overhaul was due to the stresses of his divorce to wife Katie.
However, Mark has always credited his busy lifestyle and his love of walking his Golden Retriever for his whopping weight loss. The chaser recently revealed that his lifestyle overhaul was actually spurred on after he'd been diagnosed with diabetes in 2017.
Had an eagle-eyed nurse not shot a swift glance at his legs, he might not have known about his hidden illness.
Speaking to Express.co.uk, Mark said: "I've never had a diabetic episode. I've got skin that doesn't heal properly in my lower legs. A nurse looked at me and she asked, 'Are you sure you’re not diabetic?’ They took a test and she said, 'Yes, you're diabetic.”
It was at this point in 2017 that Mark was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes which kick-started his transformation process.
