Masters student Rahim Dina (23) appeared on the spin off of hit ITV daytime show The Chase, Beat the Chasers, at the beginning of the month (January 3).
Rahim is currently studying Ecology, Evolution and Conservation at Imperial College London after completing a Biology degree at Sheffield Hallam university but his family home is in Fletton.
The show, which has just aired its second season, gives contestants a chance to pit themselves against between two and five of the show’s ‘chasers’ in a general knowledge battle against the clock.
Contestants are asked a series of preliminary questions before being offered a number of chasers to face and a cash prize. The more chasers taken on the and the longer on their clock the higher the value of winning.
The contestant then has 60 seconds and the chasers however long the player has chosen to answer questions correctly as the clocks countdown, only answering a question correctly stops your clock and starts the other. The first clock to hit 0 loses.
In Rahim’s case, he got three of the four preliminary questions correct which earned him offers ranging from £3,000 to take on two chasers to £100,000 to take on all 5 chasers (Mark Labbett, Shaun Wallace, Anne Hegarty, Paul Sinha and Jenny Ryan) with 50 seconds on their clock.
Stating ‘I’m only here once’ Rahim chose to go for the big prize, with the aim of setting some of the money aside to take his mum on a trip to visit The Seychelles, where his family originates from. He looked poised to win when the chasers only managed to stop their clock with one second remaining, while Rahim had 20 seconds to find a correct answer.
Unfortunately, he was unable to answer any of the following five questions correctly.
He said: “It would be silly not to be dissapointed but I tried to not be overly fussed with the money before the show and I didn’t make any big plans.
“I’ve seen episodes of The Chase where contestants have won big amounts of money in the head-to-head but nine times out of ten they are caught in the final chase so I know it can happen. I was also just worried about getting the first one wrong and being sent home, I’ve seen that on the Australian version of the show.
“Part of me was also thinking it was never my money so I was always thinking of going high but when I saw that the next best offer was £25,000 I decided to go for it. That’s such a big jump and I’d seen episodes in preparation when the high offer was around £60,000.
“If I’d have lost by a big margian I would be regretting taking the higher offer more. The show is called Beat the Chasers and I wanted to say that I’d done that, I don’t have any regrets.”
Following the dramatic finish, Chaser Paul Sinha reached out to Rahim to ask how he was doing and to encourage him to continue quizzing.
On the show, Paul praised Rahim’s quick thinking, stating: “I’ve not seen anyone do what you’ve done. Which is to come here and throw away questions after two seconds, clearly his brain is unbelievably speedy because the ones he knew, he knew just like that.”
Rahim filmed the show in November and is now applying for PHDs and it is at university where his love for quizzing truly took off. After previously taking part in numerous pub quizzes, he has since become heavily involved in the quizzing community by taking part in UK Quizbowl. A quiz game, open to universities, similar to popular TV show University Challenge, which holds regular tournaments.
After this, Rahim caught an episode to Beat the Chasers, more by chance than design, and considered having a go and after seeing a tweet from Jenny Ryan on the same day saying that the show had begun casting. This twist of fate gave him the push he needed to apply.
After going through the rigorous selection process, Rahim got the call to take part just a few days before the filming was set to take place.
He added: “It started off with a phone call from the producers who ask you quite random questions. I was then invited to a zoom interview with about 20 people, we played some ice-breaker games and some of us got advanced to a further zoom call.
“On that call, we were asked 50 questions and we had to hold up pieces of paper with A,B or C for our answers but they didn’t tell us if we were right or not. I was initially told I was going to be a reserve contestant but then I got the call inviting me to the studio.
“I wasn’t sure how I’d come across, I was a bit worried that some of the answers would seem a lot more obvious than they were but the reaction has been fairly positive and it was really nice of Paul to reach out and ask how I was feeling.
“A lot of my extended family were really pleased and quite surprised because I didn’t tell them and a lot of them only knew when they saw me on the TV.
“I even got a message from my grandmother’s sister, who I didn’t even know was in the UK!”
Rahim’s episode of Beat the Chasers can be found on ITV hub, Season 2 Episode 1.
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Rahim Dina came agonisingly close to winning £100,000 on ITV's Beat the Chasers. Photo: Midlands