Darren Day talks 30 years of You Bet! and his fifth engagement: "I won’t be buying any more rings"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

June 1996 wasn’t a bad month in the life of Darren Day. With the lead role in two hit West End musicals already under his belt, overnight he became a household name as the new host of ITV’s primetime Saturday-evening ratings bonanza You Bet! Thirty years later, the still bemused Day remembers how it all began.

“I was working on a building site, singing in pubs and clubs at night. But my grandfather was in vaudeville, and the one place he’d never played was the London Palladium, so I went there for an audition, just to tell him I’d sung on that stage. I wasn’t remotely trained, and then Andrew Lloyd Webber cast me as Joseph.”

The Copacabana musical and other shows followed, before Day received a phone call from his manager, asking, “Would you like to do You Bet!?” Day assumed it was as a celebrity guest. “‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Which day?’ And he said, ‘No, they want you to host.’”

Thus on 1 June 1996, the former snooker player from Colchester stepped into the shoes of Matthew Kelly (who had himself succeeded Bruce Forsyth) to host one of the biggest shows on TV, alongside co-host Jet from Gladiators. ITV had made the announcement with much fanfare. “We were at the London studios, with the press all lined up waiting to meet the new hosts. And they had me riding up on a Harley-Davidson motorbike with Jet on the back. Very showbiz!”

Unsurprising, with audience figures of between eight and 12 million for each episode. “I’d become quite well known off the back of Joseph and my recording career, but suddenly my recognition went through the roof,” remembers Day. “It coincided with my having a top-20 single and appearing on stage in Summer Holiday, which broke box-office records. There were lots of things going on. It was lovely. I never took it for granted.”

Day also fondly remembers the game show that saw celebrity guests betting on the ability of members of the public to achieve a series of unlikely feats and challenges. “One bloke was blindfolded, and he could tell the model, make and year a car was manufactured, just by listening to the driver’s door close.” No wonder it was a hit.

After two series, Day moved on to present Don’t Try This at Home!, also for ITV, but by then the clean-cut prince of British entertainment had found distraction enough to keep the British tabloid press busy for the next decade as a dedicated “love rat”, with a reported seven engagements to his name. He laughs. “It was only actually ever four,” he adds, “although I’m engaged now, so that makes five. But my lady Sophie is a keeper. I won’t be buying any more rings.”

He’s still working, too, currently preparing to appear on stage in Cirencester as 50s US record producer Sam Phillips in Million Dollar Quartet.

“It’s been a funny old journey,” Day says now. “I was the golden boy of stage and screen for five years and then spectacularly messed it up. I was just a boy from a council estate, let loose in a sweet shop. But hosting You Bet! remains one of the proudest moments of my career, for which I’ll always be grateful.”

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