The Chase's Paul Sinha called 'thick t***' by vile trolls – but he had perfect response

The Chase star Paul Sinha was from a very early age a chess prodigy with a flair for maths and a passion for general knowledge. But by his own admission, his exceptional recall of obscure fact could desert him on the big occasions.

In his book Once Sinha Lifetime, Paul describes how he “crumbled under pressure” as he led a team from the prestigious Dulwich College to an inter-school quizzing tournament. And something distressingly familiar happened to him when he made his Chase debut in September 2011.

“I got my first three questions wrong,” he recalled. “It wasn’t nerves, and they weren’t especially tough: just slightly out of my comfort zone.” It took him a little while to recover his composure and he eventually won the Final Chase – his first quiz show win.

Five months later, the episode was shown on air and Paul soon discovered a slew of horrific insults on social media. He was variously described as “a toad,” “a fat pimp,” and “The Man from Del Monte” .

One went so far as to describe the former GP and comedian as "a thick t***". In his book, though, he offered his response. "I didn't care," he wrote. "Finally, I had won an episode of a quiz show."

Over time, Paul managed to win Chase fans over, earning affectionate nicknames such as  "The Sinnerman", "The Smiling Assassin" and "Sarcasm in a Suit”. He says he’s better known in overseas territory – such as New Zealand where The Chase is shown in prime time rather than in the UK when it airs at around 5pm, when many of us are still at work.

Paul describes how his choice of career came as something as a surprise to his family, who expected him to follow his father into the medical profession. He attended a noted medical school – St. George’s, University of London – but points out that three of its best-known graduates are comedian Harry Hill, Taskmaster favourite Mike Wozniak, and himself.

Paul not only surprised his parents by ditching medicine, but by not finding himself a nice Bengali girl to marry. 

Instead the quiz legend tied the knot with his partner Olly Levy in 2019. He wryly admits that his nerves got the better of him on that day too, when guests at the  lavish ceremony in Mayfair were getting impatient because a video projection had broken down and Olly was desperately trying to fix it.

Faced with an increasingly disgruntled crowd, he recalls, he wasn’t sure what to do. He said: “As people began to get tetchy about whether anything was actually going to happen, I started to fall apart.”

But all’s well that ends well, and during an appearance on the Loose Men panel last year, he explained to Vernon Kay, Tommy Fury and Martin Kemp, how he felt about marriage. He said: "Everyone deserves their moment in the sun and their moment of happiness.

“You look at someone and you go, "You’re never going to be happier than you are with that one person.”