Sara Davies was shocked to be offered Time is Money presenting opportunity
Sara Davies admits that she was taken by surprise when ITV asked her to host the new quiz show Time is Money.
Sara Davies was surprised when ITV asked her to host Time is Money.
The Dragons' Den star presents the new daytime game show that started airing last week and admits that hosting a quiz wasn't on her "big life agenda".
Sara told the Mirror: "It's not like presenting a quiz was on my big life agenda, but what I've learned about myself over the last five years or so is that I just love doing TV.
"And I like doing TV with other people because I think I've got quite a lot of natural warmth and empathy."
The 41-year-old star continued: "So when they came to me and said, 'ITV would really love you on this quiz with us', I was like, 'Wow, that came out of the left field.'
"Normally, when you're launching a new quiz, you would want to go with a presenter who's a tried and tested professional at these sort of things. So I felt so humbled and honoured that they were prepared to take a chance on me.
"That's a big risk for them, which just drove me even more because I don't do anything half-heartedly. If I'm in something, I'm really in it."
Sara recalled how she spent hours learning the pronunciations of words because of her north-east accent.
She said: "It can be quite challenging when it comes to pronouncing Shakespearean characters and European footballers.
"I used to come in at silly o'clock in the morning and spend hours just practicing the pronunciation of some of the words with the questions team so that I didn't let anybody down on the set."
Davies filmed Time is Money alongside a crew who are very experienced on quiz shows but relished being out of her "comfort zone".
The former Strictly Come Dancing contestant said: "Going into there as somebody who wasn't a professional quiz presenter, I felt like I needed to lift myself up to their level to justify having a seat at that table.
"But that's when you get the biggest satisfaction, isn't it? When you push yourself out your comfort zone, you try something new and then you excel at it.
"By the time we got to record episode 25, I felt like a quizzing expert."
