Game shows​ have been around almost as long as TV itself. There have been plenty of game shows
and even more game show hosts, but some of the game show hosts have been really terrible people.
Let's dive into the gross world of terrible game show hosts.
Way back in 1966, Bob Eubanks started hosting The Newlywed Game. He hosted it off and on for years
after that, including stints in the '70s, '80s, '90s, and even the 2000s. The format of the show
is pretty simple — a group of newlywed couples are quizzed on how much they know
about each other with questions ranging from the mundane to the PG-level risque.
Eubanks would playfully dig at the contestants and feign shock at some of the more saucy answers.
Back in 1989, Eubanks appeared in the Michael Moore documentary Roger and Me,
about the downsizing of the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan. Eubanks was interviewed
because he's a Flint native, and took the opportunity to randomly toss out a joke that
was both homophobic and anti-Semitic. In 2012, while hosting a stage parody of The Newlywed Game,
Eubanks again made a homophobic joke on tape, according to The Advocate.
The reputation from these jokes and his history of off-color remarks on
The Newlywed Game has dogged him since. Good thing his show isn't still taping,
or there would probably be petitions for him to be fired.
Dick Clark is a pop culture icon and an American original.
His big break was as the host and producer of American Bandstand,
a pop music showcase that ran from the '50s until the late '80s.
In 1960, the House Committee on Legislative Oversight investigated Clark during the "payola"
scandal, an especially skeevy moment in the recording industry's history that revealed
an elaborate system of illegal and quasi-legal kickbacks and ownership stakes. Findings showed
that Clark, who hosted all kinds of up-and-coming acts on American Bandstand, also had a financial
stake in many of those artists' record labels — 33 different music companies, in fact.
“I went into the music business. I was a manager of artists, a publisher of music,
a manufacturer of recordings.”
So, when a Bandstand appearance propelled record sales for certain acts,
Clark profited. He told Congress,
"I think the crime I have committed, if any,
is that I made a great deal of money in a short time on little investment,"
“Horizontally, vertically, every single way you can think of, I made money from that show.”
By the time Clark testified, he had, per the orders of Bandstand's network ABC,
sold off his ownership stakes in those record labels, and so he walked away without punishment.
For a hot minute in 2001, the game show Weakest Link was the hottest
thing on American television. Part of the charm was host Anne Robinson,
the opposite of the usual friendly game show host in that she was a stern,
stone-faced British person who mocked failed contestants and dismissed them with a curt
"You are the Weakest Link, goodbye!"
In October 2017, Robinson weighed in on the #MeToo movement on BBC Radio 4. She called out, quote,
"the fragility of the women who are unable to deal with the treachery of the workplace."
In June 2018, she doubled down on her comments when speaking with The Independent, saying,
"[I] certainly didn't run crying to the loo [...] if a man "tried to pat my bum. [...] I
was also really shocked that women further up the pole weren't doing more to curtail it."
So yeah, Robinson thinks it's women's fault that women get harassed. That's problematic.
The former big-screen heartthrob won a bunch of Emmys as a comedy star,
both for his work as NBC executive Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock and as Donald Trump on
Saturday Night Live. Off-camera, Baldwin is a hothead. In 2013, he ran after a photographer
trying to take his picture and levied a profane, homosexual slur. In April 2014, Baldwin got
in a fight with an ex-aide to Mitt Romney, which ended in some more anti-gay language.
In 2007, a voicemail Baldwin left for his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland, leaked to the
media. Apparently, she missed a scheduled phone call from dear old dad, and he came unglued.
In an angry message to his daughter, he took shots at his former wife, Kim Basinger, saying,
"I don't give a damn that you're 12 years old or 11 years old, or a child,
or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the a-- who doesn't care about what you do."
He topped it off by calling his flesh and blood a "thoughtless little pig."
The message was so nasty that a family law judge
issued an order that temporarily prevented Baldwin from contacting his daughter.
Most people know Ben Stein from one of two places — Ferris Bueller's Day Off or
as the game show host of Win Ben Stein's Money. However, Stein has actually been
in law and politics for years, and was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon
and Gerald Ford. That said, Stein is also known for having some pretty questionable ideas.
Stein made a movie called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed that was critical
of evolution. And that's fine, but as the USA Today review notes, the movie portrays anyone
who supports evolution as un-American ... and links evolution to eugenics and the Nazi party.
The Anti-Defamation League actually released a statement denouncing the
film for its misappropriation of the Holocaust.
Stein once wrote a defense of Dominique Strauss-Kahn,
a French politician and former manager of the International Monetary Fund. Strauss-Kahn has
been accused of numerous sexual assaults over the years and, though never found guilty,
he has settled at least one civil suit against an accuser out of court. According to Stein,
Strauss-Kahn was too important to sexually assault someone, because if we've learned
anything in our modern era, it's that rich men are terrified of abusing their power.
Match Game was very much a product of the 1970s, and looking back on it years later can
induce some serious cringe. Host Gene Rayburn routinely engaged in banter that,
by today's standards, would qualify as racist, sexist, or just generally offensive. Clips show
Rayburn acting like what could be at best described as a dirty old man. In one clip,
he seems to actually grope panelist Elaine Joyce then laugh it off when she calls him
out on it. Another time he dropped two jokes in a row about Fannie Flag's body. Rayburn was
definitely into making things uncomfortable for just about everyone on stage and in the audience.
In 2015, TV3 announced that two judges on New Zealand's version of The X Factor
had been fired for bullying.
There's constructive criticism, and then there's whatever it was that
husband-and-wife judges Natalia Kills and Willy Moon decided to do to 25-year-old contestant
Joe Irvine. After his performance, Kills accused him of stealing her husband's look.
“From the hair, to the suit, do you not have any value or respect for originality?”
She then called him, quote,
"disgusting," "artistically atrocious," and "creepy," adding, "you make me sick."
Moon got on board with the vitriol.
“You’re like Norman Bates dressing up in his mother’s clothing.
It’s just a little bittle creepy.”
He then went on to suggest the crowd — who was booing wholeheartedly by now — was in danger,
because Irvine was the type to kill them.
They were fired shortly after, as X Factor deemed their destructive rant unacceptable.
In June of 2020, The Wrap announced E! was going to be picking up Kevin Hart's socially
distanced game show, Celebrity Game Face. Two years prior, Hart’s past homophobic tweets had
already surfaced, costing him his Oscar hosting gig. The tweets absolutely aren't
fit to repeat in polite company, but add in a stand-up special where he talked about his
fear of having a gay son and his absolute refusal to apologize, and things got ugly.
In 2019, NBC reported that he was at the center of another controversy when he shrugged off Lil Nas X
for trying to have a serious conversation about the stigma gay people still face. Once again,
Twitter made it clear that dismissive homophobia is not cool.
From 1945 to 1964, Queen for a Day gave audiences some entertainment that would be
very, very uncomfortable today. Host Jack Bailey would interview a panel of four pre-selected women
who each wanted something, and at the end, the winner was chosen by audience applause.
Here's where it gets creepy. Bailey was a former carnival barker, which gives an idea of his style.
And the contestants on the show were poor, down-on-their-luck women who were asking for
things they desperately needed — requests included a wheelchair for a disabled child,
a crib that didn't keep falling apart, an artificial leg, a gurney so a polio-stricken
child could get some fresh air, and encyclopedias for children's schoolwork. One woman appeared on
the show after the accidental death of her husband, and she was hoping to get money to
go back to school and support her family. Bailey's observation? "Poor little girl."
He was a master at getting the women to beg for what they needed,
and if they started to cry, he'd berate them into stopping.
According to Closer Weekly, the show Twenty-One pitted two contestants against each other,
and the first to answer questions right and get 21 points was the winner. The first episode was
horrible — both contestants got 17 questions in a row completely wrong. Their sponsor, Geritol,
was absolutely livid. So, host/producer Jack Barry and producer Dan Enright decided to cheat.
Contestants were coached not only in regards to the questions but
also started being cast as characters. The biggest was Herbert Milton Stempel — the
idea was to portray him as an unlikeable nerd. And then they brought in the handsome,
charismatic, Columbia University professor Charles Van Doren as the nerd-slayer.
Barry and Enright got Stempel to throw the game so he could be replaced by Van Doren, promising
him a spot on a new show they were developing. Van Doren took home $129,000 and appeared on the cover
of Time and TV Guide, while Stempel went on to blackmail Enright. Eventually, the New York State
District Attorney's office caught on, Twenty-One — and other rigged quiz shows — were busted.
Piers Morgan is a host on Good Morning Britain, Britain's Got Talent, and America's Got Talent,
and he's widely regarded as one of the worst people on television.
Here's a sampling of all the terrible things he’s said.
When someone tried to explain the idea of gender as non-binary to him, he asked,
"Can I be an elephant? Can I literally
say I'm now an elephant, and now I get afforded elephant rights?"
He's accused those suffering from PTSD of instead having what he calls WNTS, or "whiny needy twerp
syndrome". He responded to the 2017 Women's March by saying he was going to start a Men's March,
in order to, quote, "protest the creeping global emasculation of my gender by rabid feminists."
When Kim Kardashian posted a photo showing her cellulite, he said,
"Why should we celebrate it? We put up with it,
tolerate it but not accept it. Flaws should not be celebrated."
And yes, the list just keeps on going.
Netflix's Flinch is a game show where people have to resist doing exactly that — flinching,
as terrifying things happen around them.
Host Seann Walsh has had his share of horrible things popping up in his personal life, too.
It started when he was a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing,
and he was caught smooching his then-married dance partner, Katya Jones.
“We made a huge mistake, and I regret it deeply.” “Yeah, ok, Katya.”
“Obviously, I apologize, and I can’t apologize enough.”
According to The Guardian, his girlfriend of five years, Rebecca Humphries,
immediately ended their relationship, saying that she'd suspected for a while
there was something going on — in spite of his denial. He’d allegedly question
her sanity when she’d question him. Talk about emotional and psychological abuse.
Walsh took a break from social media only to reappear in a 2020 video, in which, according
to Extra, he appeared to grab girlfriend Grace Adderly by the throat and throw her onto the bed.
While they're clearly both in on the joke, the whole act was pretty tone deaf.
Ellen DeGeneres has had a long career being the sort of person you'd love to have for a friend,
but it turns out, guests and staff alike have a major beef with the star.
According to multiple reports,
things really got started when comedian Kevin T. Porter tweeted in March 2020,
"Right now we all need a little kindness. You know, like Ellen DeGeneres always talks
about! She's also notoriously one of the meanest people alive. Respond to this with the most insane
stories you've heard about Ellen being mean & I'll match every one w/$2 to @LAFoodBank."
People came forward with how they had been instructed never to make eye contact with her
and how she treated staff and guests alike on a good day — not to mention being left in the
dark about how things were going to go through COVID. Staffers came forward with tales of what
they called a "toxic" work environment filled with threats, fear, sexual assault, harassments, and
intimidation, with some saying they had been fired for things like taking off work to attend family
funerals. DeGeneres issued several apologies, and Porter made a $600 donation to the food bank.
Jackie Gleason might be best known for The Honeymooners, but he also hosted a game show...
very, very briefly. You're in the Picture was a show where contestants would stick their heads
through a picture — carnival-style — and then have to ask questions to figure out where they were.
It was so bad that after the first episode aired,
Gleason took the next week's timeslot to issue a formal apology.
"I'm telling you friends that I've seen bombs in my day.
This would make the H-bomb look like a 2-inch salute."
That was nice of him, but Gleason wasn't a nice guy. According to The New York Times,
"Off screen, he was a sloth and a drunk, a bully and a boor,
an unfaithful husband and an absentee father, a brutal boss and an abusive associate."
Gleason — the child of two alcoholic parents — also struggled with alcoholism
and regularly cheated on his wife of 40 years and the mother of his
two daughters. He spent so little time with his daughters that Newsweek says
when they called him on the phone, he rarely recognized their voices.
He was so miserable to work with that he pushed Neil Simon out of television and into the theater,
and one of his managers once wrote:
"[He is] the worst person I ever worked with in my entire life."
Donald Trump's counterpart on the British version of The Apprentice is Lord Alan Sugar, and he's
been very vocal about some awful opinions of his, starting with his 2020 tweets about facemasks.
In April 2020, he tweeted to his 5.3 million followers that if they were worried,
they should make their own facemasks using rubber bands stapled to coffee filters.
When followers pointed out that he was making a joke while health
workers were facing a critical shortage of PPE, he responded, quote, "Shut it."
He's also gotten in trouble for some racist comments directed toward Senegal's World Cup team.
The Guardian says he apologized after tweeting a photo of the team saying,
"I recognise some of these guys from the beach in Marbella. Multi tasking resourceful chaps."
… a statement which implied some very harmful racial stereotypes.
Then there's his opinions on female employees. The Guardian says that he said that he couldn’t
imagine giving a job to a woman who was pregnant. He's doubled down on that one,
calling laws that prevent employers from asking job-seekers about their marital or
child-bearing status, quote, "counterproductive."
Nick Cannon is the host of MTV's Wild 'N Out and a presenter on The Masked Singer,
and he's had a career that's spanned decades. In 2020, part of that career came to an end
when he was fired from all ViacomCBS shows — which includes his MTV gig — for a podcast
episode that, quote, "promoted hateful speech and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."
The podcast in question also featured Richard Griffin, also known as Professor Griff,
and the rapper who was kicked out of Public Enemy after a Washington Post interview
in which he claimed Jews were behind, quote, "the majority of wickedness" in the world.
During the podcast, Griffin claimed that he was hated, quote, "because I told the truth."
Cannon agreed, saying, quote, "You're speaking facts."
Cannon went on to call him "a legend" and claim,
quote, "Semitic people are black people," and added,
"You can't be anti-Semitic when we are the Semitic people."
Cannon responded to his firing with,
"I demand full ownership of my billion dollar Wild 'N Out brand that I created, and [...] I demand
that the hate and back door bullying cease and while we are at it [...] I demand the Apology!"
The Great British Bake Off might have a reputation as one of the warmest, fuzziest, most good-hearted
competition shows out there, but not all of their hosts come from such a sweet background.
Matt Lucas — along with writing and performing partner David Walliams of Britain's Got
Talent — was previously known for a show called Little Britain. The sketch show didn't just
feature the occasional questionable sketch, it was filled with them. Glamour singles out characters
like a Thai bride named Ting Tong, the, quote, "luxury obsessed obese black woman" named Desiree,
and Daffyd, quote, "a gay character seeped in homophobic stereotypes" as among the worst.
Little Britain also ridiculed people with disabilities, the poor, and trans women, too.
And here's the thing — in 2010, Lucas and Walliams followed Little Britain with a show called
Come Fly With Me, which once again featured the duo playing a group of
questionable characters based on extremely harmful racial stereotypes.
The Telegraph notes that Lucas donned blackface to play a West Indian woman and a Pakistani worker.
Walliams sported a so-called tan to play a passenger liaison named Moses.
In 2017, Lucas sort of apologized in The Guardian, saying he wouldn't play those
characters anymore. He said that he would no longer perform in blackface, either.
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