‘Temptation’ host Ed Phillips shakes Blair’s hand after the Big Win in 2007.

Hello, and welcome back to my four-part interview with 2007 Temptation Grand Champion Blair Martin! When we left off last week, I’d just asked Blair if he now considered himself officially retired as a quiz show contestant…

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BM: I haven’t applied for any other quiz shows since then. However, one quiz show came asking me. It was The Chase. They asked me, would I test as a Chaser?

SH: Oh, right!

BM: And I’ve always felt that if I’d done better in my audition, which was just answering 20 questions over the phone…

SH: Oh, okay.

BM: … but it didn’t work. And then Beat the Chasers came and headhunted me, partly because I had drifted into serious quizzing.

SH: Okay.

BM: It’s a very different world, and that’s how I first met Issa Schultz. Even when I met him, I thought, ‘aren’t you familiar’? And it was because he was on Sale of the Century, in the latter years of Sale, when he was still at high school! So we met through the Pan Pacific Masters Games, which were every two years, then became every year. And Quizzing Australia is the national body for quizzes associated with World Quizzing in London. And various famous names are part of all that. Anyone who has watched Eggheads or The Chase in the United Kingdom or the United States will know these absolute legends of quizzing. Anyhow, I got into serious quizzing, and won a couple of gold medals for quizzing over about three years. So my quizzing life has ended up in that world. People have said, “Why don’t you go on Hard Quiz?” And I’m like, ‘Well, that’d be fun, but I really don’t know what my special subject would be’, because a lot of them have already been used. Mastermind‘s the same. But if SBS isn’t going to pay for my airfares and accommodation, I ain’t coming. I don’t have an ongoing income stream in my life. And so I’m sorry, if you want me to be a contestant, you pay for it. So being a part of the serious quizzing thing has meant I picked up some Queensland quiz championships. Whenever Issa has not played – I must say it’s in the years when Issa doesn’t play – I’m the Queensland champion… So next year, I’m due again! And the internet gave us online quizzing through the pandemic. And I have spent the last five years being a part of this online quiz community.

SH: That’s great. You mentioned before about taking the opportunity after Temptation to travel and see the world…

BM: Yes.

SH: And did you did you also use the prize money for things other than travel?

BM: Because I did a lot of character work – which I still do now – I ended up developing about 36 different characters. So I invested in those. I have a beautiful Henry VIII outfit, because I did him for a little while in an improvised bawdy banquet style show, with King Henry VIII looking for his next wife… So I just ploughed that into the stuff that I thought was going to help develop me. But life doesn’t always go that way. And things didn’t always go the way I wanted. And in the last half dozen years, it hasn’t been as fantastic for me in that way. And I’m having to learn a different way of living. And I don’t know exactly what the next set of stages are.

SH: I see.

BM: But I certainly know at the moment, the months of October, November, December, I’m in high demand. I have created a very real (Santa Claus) character. And I have testimonials from parents saying how their child has responded. And they have said, “even I am questioning whether you’re real”!

SH: That’s great!

BM: It’s very much that Miracle on 34th Street thing; very much the Kris Kringle character saying, “As far as I’m concerned, I’m real”. Because I am using the skills that I have as an actor. I can have a conversation with anybody.

He looks very real to me!

SH: Yes.

BM: And I can make them believe. So I know at this part of my life – I’m 64 this year – this is a different stage of my life now. And I have different goals. Will I travel again overseas? Maybe. I got very fortunate between 2015 and 2018. Not that it was Temptation money, because there wasn’t much of it left by that point. But I have lanyards that tell me I’m a radio journalist! I don’t have a journalism degree, but the European Broadcasting Union and the Eurovision Song Contest believe that I’m a radio journalist.

SH: Hooray!

BM: So from 2015 to 2018, I went to four Eurovision Song Contests, as a radio journalist.

And I’m interviewing acts, and I’m going to wonderful parts of the world. I went to Vienna, Stockholm, Kiev and Lisbon. And all of those, maybe apart from Stockholm, were cities I didn’t think I’d ever get to. And to me, that’s a fantastic thing!

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Sure is! I love Eurovision, and actually attending the contest one year is most definitely on my bucket list… But Blair’s certainly beat me to it! Join us back here next week, when Blair outlines how his life would have been different if he’d never had his Big Win…

See you then!