Magnus Carlsen In BBC's The One Show: Short But Sweet
It was chess on primetime national television for the U.K. last night. Magnus Carlsen appeared in BBC's The One Show, albeit very briefly.
The One Show, a half-hour program on BBC One on weekdays, discusses a wide variety of topics. A short and slightly odd chess item was part of last night's show, still available for U.K. viewers here.
Magnus Carlsen was one of the two guests, and joined singer Josh Groban on the green couch. The world champ was invited because of the London Chess Classic, which starts on Friday in Kensington Olympia in London.
However, right after he was introduced as “officially ranked as the best chess player in history” (Carlsen frowned briefly), first a 3.5-minute video was shown — and it wasn't about Carlsen or the London tournament. No, it was about Bobby Fischer.
Nice to have chess on The One Show, but weird treatment. Here's the current world champ, so let's concentrate on crazy old Bobby Fischer
— Stephen Moss (@StephenMossGdn) December 3, 2015
The video was presented by Gyles Daubeney Brandreth, who is an English writer, broadcaster, actor, former MP and a regular contributor to The One Show. He summarized Fischer's life story, claimed the American got stripped of his title “two years” after winning it, and used another actor to replay some of the moves from that match.
Then it was finally time for Carlsen. The interview, which would last less than four minutes, had a most original format: presenter Matt Baker played a game of bullet chess against Carlsen, getting two minutes on the clock vs 30 seconds for the Norwegian.
While answering even more original questions from presenter Alex Jones (such as “when did you learn to play chess”), Carlsen duly checkmated Baker in 12 moves.
Playing chess while being interviewed pretty good going! Magnus Carlsen
Posted by The One Show on Thursday, December 3, 2015
And still, with all its flaws (only apparent to chess experts), this bit of chess as part of The One Show was actually quite nice. Carlsen was enjoying himself, and the presenters did a reasonable job.
The highlight was Carlsen's answer to yet another cliche question. OK, he must have given the answer before, and it came out a bit too quickly perhaps, but it was hilarious nonetheless.
Baker: “It's extraordinary to be on the other end of what you're doing there. How far ahead are you thinking in a match like that?”
Carlsen: “It was difficult to think ahead because I couldn't guess any of your moves!”
A great final touch to a short but sweet bit of chess on prime time national TV.
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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