If looks could kill! I thought God John you poor bastard! We think they might still be sleeping in separate bedrooms

"If looks could kill! I thought, God, John, you poor bastard!" We think they might still be sleeping in separate bedrooms."Great telly," says Chris, happily "Great telly," I agree (And people are desperate to get on it. Indeed, as one of the show's producers later tells me: "A bloke even phoned up the other day to say: 'I've been trying to get on for ages, so can I just come up the week after next? I'll make my own way from Cornwall.' ")The show has been sold to 91 countries, has swept the ratings in America, regularly attracts 15 million here (19 million, once), and has just seen off The Weakest Link, which has been dispatched back to daytime telly. "The BBC must be really pissed off, but it just couldn't survive in the big, bad world of peak TV." Chris isn't too sure about Anne Robinson. "Can you believe that a producer, at some point, thought the wink was a good idea and said: 'Keep doing the wink, Anne'?"Millionaire has even taken over in our house. My eight-year-old son managed to acquire both the adult and junior versions of the board game for Christmas, so now I can't even brush my teeth without: "Mum, for £2,000, how many pins are there at the back in a game of tenpin bowling?" Of course, being a fun and good-humoured mother, I am always up for it. Son, I say, shove off before I show you how many twists make for a good Chinese burn.I meet Chris in his dressing-room at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, which is where Millionaire is filmed. He is wearing jeans and a vivid, royal-blue puffa sleeveless thingy.

He has never exactly been a style icon, and is unlikely ever to be. "I just bought a leather jacket from Camden and it's really naff. I came out of the shop thinking, God, I look like the bee's bollocks in this, but then I got into the car and my driver looked at me and said: 'Are you sure?' And I thought, no not really. I'll probably auction it for Comic Relief." How much was it? "£300."He's terribly rich, of course. He is said to earn £2.5m from Millionaire ,and £1m from Capital Radio, where he still hosts the breakfast show He works spectacularly hard Most nights, he only gets four or five hours sleep He catches up when he can. He once, he says, fell asleep against a wall in Islington: "I was woken up by someone wanting my autograph." He often drops off as the records are playing on his radio show: "Annie, my assistant, has to slap me."What motivates him? Ambition? Money? Neither, he insists.

"Look, if I was properly ambitious, or in it for the money, I'd have gone to America to do Millionaire They offered it to me, but I turned it down. OK, I'd be a dollar zillionaire by now, but I wouldn't have had a life, and I didn't want my kids growing up over there." (He lives in Esher, Surrey, with his second wife, Ingrid, and they have six children between them - two from his first marriage, two from hers, and two together.)He is very friendly, very blokey - "Beer? Wine? Cigar?" He is paid to be likeable, I guess, but I don't think he's likeable just because he is paid to be He just is He remembers that I interviewed him yonks ago. "Now, when did you last do me, if you'll pardon the expression?" He's a bit of a one for these fantastically bad double entendres. As an only child, he later says, "I did spend a lot of time playing with myself. Ha, ha!" Yes, truly, he's just the sort of prankster who'd, say, lift up the T-shirt of a certain Sophie Rhys-Jones as a holiday prank. He can be magnificently juvenile, but in a way, this is his charm, this is what makes him. Some people say, how can the person who brought us Tiswas - that 1970s groundbreaking, anarchic, dangerous, hilarious, superb Saturday-morning children's programme - have ended up so mainstream? But I don't see the contradiction.

I think, in his genuinely uncomplicated way, he just enjoys what is put in front of him. Can enjoy the present.Are you good at living in the present, Chris? "Yes I do tend to be very happy wherever I am I've never worried about the future. In the middle of Tiswas, I never thought: what the hell do I do after this?'" What, I ask, did Tiswas, actually stand for? "This is Saturday, Watch and Smile, which was pretty damn catchy in 1974.""How come I never knew that?" I gasp."I don't know," he says. "I can't begin to explain your ignorance."How, I wonder, does he account for the phenomenon that is Millionaire? "You watch it for the people," he says, "because you get interested in the people." I disagree. "You watch it for the money," I say, "because you get interested in the money Because they're life-changing amounts of money. Because if X wins £125,000, she can have a nice car and tell the bank manager to sod off and take the kids to Disneyland and it'll be great." He accepts I have a point.

"This wonderful bloke came on the other night and said: 'To tell you the truth, I've never seen £1,000,' and he won £1,000 and the place erupted." What was it like when Judith Keppel won the million? "Amazing The place went mad The crew - who are all big, hairy buggers - went mad It was like Man U beating Bayern Munich in the last minute. I think everyone in the country got up and went: "YES!" Certainly, it has something that Mastermind never had It might even have something that Ask the Family never had. Didn't you hate those families, Chris? Didn't they look like they not only played charades, but actually enjoyed it? "Yes," he says, "while the children played the piano." Never great telly, we agree. Never something you'd rush home for.Chris was born and brought up in Reading, the son of a self-made man who worked up from tea boy to managing director at Huntley & Palmer, the biscuit company.