Anne Robinson-Gap Rating 3/10

She is a popular British television presenter and television game show hostess who is most famous for hosting the BBC game show Weakest Link. She also hosted the United States NBC primetime version of the show, which has since ceased production. Before she hosted Weakest Link, in the 1990s, she was also one of the presenters of the long-running news program, Watchdog.

Robinson's icy persona and monotone voice has become infamous on The Weakest Link. Her repeated icy utterance, "You are the weakest link — goodbye!" became a catchphrase soon after the show started in 2000. Some even consider her treatment of contestants to be worse than Pop Idol and American Idol's Simon Cowell, who is also notorious for his nasty comments.

She is of Irish Catholic descent and attended a Roman Catholic convent boarding School in Hampshire. Her mother, Anne Josephine Robinson Sr., was a successful agricultural businesswoman from Ireland, where she was the manager of a market stall. Robinson was hired as a chicken gutter during the holidays before taking office jobs at a clerical post at a law firm. For many years, she developed her tenurre of writing British tabloid headlines. In 1967, she was the first young female reporter at the Daily Mail. Her work was at one point uncomfortable for her. While working, she met and fell in love with the deputy news editor, Charlie Wilson, and the two got married in 1968. The couple had a daughter, Emma in 1970, who's a British radio disc jockey and has also hosted a game show in the U.S. on the Nickelodeon network. In 1973, the marriage disintegrated after Robinson became an alcoholic. That same year, both Robinson and Wilson initiated divorce proceedings.

She began her career as a journalist, and at one time worked for the late, controversial magnate, Robert Maxwell on the staff of the Daily Mirror. She began appearing on BBC television during the 1980s, on programmes such as Points of View and Watchdog. She also presented a weekly show on BBC Radio 2 on Saturday mornings, which ran from 1988 - 1993. She returned to the station briefly in 1996, sitting in for Jimmy Young on the Lunchtime slot for 2 weeks.

She caused a furore when she appeared on the comedy show Room 101 on March 5, 2001, and made derisive comments about Welsh people. Comments such as "what are they for" were supposedly based on dislike for people speaking in Welsh around the market stall operated by her mother during her childhood. She later apologised for the comments and agreed to do promotional work for the Wales Tourist Board to encourage people to visit the country.

The persona she adopts for the purposes of The Weakest Link is her own invention. Currently, she also hosts the BBC's outtakes programme, Outtake TV, and the BBC's interactive quiz, Test the Nation. (Formerly with Phillip Schofield, and now alongside Danny Wallace.)

In 2001, Robinson published her autobiography, Memoirs of an Unfit Mother, in which she describes her former drinking problem.

Robinson also hosted an episode of Have I Got News For You in 2002 where she was baited slightly by Ian Hislop because of her admiration for Robert Maxwell. The programme also showed a clip from a 1995 episode where Paul Merton made fun of her wink.

In the US in 2005, she made a guest appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where Robinson talked about herself admitting that she was an unfit mother (which, coincidentally, she wrote the book, 4 years earlier). In addition, Robinson appeared as "Anne Droid" in a 2005 episode of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who (episode title: Bad Wolf). In this episode, Robinson played a version of herself as the Weakest Link host, as a robot who appeared to disintegrate the losers. She also hosted a satirical news-based chat show on BBC One called What's the Problem? with Anne Robinson, beginning in 2005.

On 23 April 2006, The Sunday Times Rich List named Anne Robinson as one of the UKs richest media personalities, worth £60 million (USD 112 million).