ITV The Chase’s Darragh Ennis’ financial struggles before TV fame

The Chase star Darragh Ennis has confessed his motivation for going on the show was simply to buy a back door for his home. The scientist turned Chaser admitted he and his wife found themselves in dire need and had no money which is why he applied to the ITV show as a contestant.

Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk in advance of the publication of his first book The Body: 10 Things You Should Know he explained: "I'm the kind of person who says, 'ah, it'll be grand,' and it always is.

"So my wife and I bought a house, and we moved in. We had no money to the point where, when we first moved in there was meant to be a fridge freezer the old owner was supposed to have left behind. They took it away with them and we could not pay to replace it!

"My brother, an absolute hero, bought us fridge. We had a new baby at that time, so he bought us a fridge and got it delivered the next day. That's how broke we were.

"But the previous owners had also taken the back door out of the house! So there was a conservatory, a really old ramshackle conservatory that I think they built themselves out of wood. For months it was really drafty, and the door wouldn't lock so we couldn't lock our house and were really, really cold," he recalled speaking over Zoom from his home.

"So I literally was going on the show to get a back door for my house," he confessed about his 2017 appearance as a contestant on the programme. Darragh got far more than a door as it proved to be a life changing experience for him when he was invited to join the show as a bona fide Chaser making his first appearance in 2020.

"It took nearly two years from the phone call to me actually appearing so there was quite a gap. And when you're going through the process the producers are really good at taking care of you. We had lots of conversations about how life would change if I got the job and I was able to set boundaries.

"So no one knows who my children are, what they look like, and that's it. I don't have photographs of them no one knows their names, ages, anything about them. So that's completely removed from the sphere, and that was one of the conditions I had on taking the job."

Darragh even kept his day job up until recently explaining: "I was pretty much a full time scientist when I wasn't recording. So, you know, I hadn't changed my life at all. All of this random stuff that I do, going to award shows and stuff, it wasn't the main thing."

Now however he is ready to branch out into other TV work and admits he would love to do a "grown up" science show.

"I'd love to do more TV," he says. "I really, really want to do a science show for grown ups. I think we need to have more science programming, not for children. It's great for children. But that's a big sort of gap in the market. There isn't one at the minute and there's a big gap in programming in the UK and Ireland," he ponders citing Tomorrow's World as the kind of programme he would like to make.

"I've pitched a few things, but nothing's quite caught. But that's what I'd love to do. What I really want to be is David Attenborough, because he's always been my scientific hero. But I'd love it," he enthused.

In the meantime, he is kept busy preparing to record a new season of The Chase and promoting his first book. "It's a science book," he concedes. "But it's not for scientists. It's for normal people who aren't into the technical stuff, but want to know a little bit about their bodies and how it works, or from a scientific perspective.

"So it uses normal, accessible language and it explains everything from how we grow from a single cell into a human, through how we get our energy into ourselves, what our immune system does, and all the way down to what happens to our body after we die. So it tells the whole life story, but all in an accessible way," he said.

THE BODY: 10 Things You Should Know by Dr Darragh Ennis is published in hardback by Seven Dials on 26th September, priced at £12.99. It is also available in audio & eBook.