Jenny Ryan Celebrates ‘Made It’ Moment After Becoming a Question on Tipping Point
Jenny Ryan: The Chase star reacts after Tipping Point mention ‘Made it, ma!’ (Image: ITV)
Jenny Ryan has faced countless questions during her years on The Chase, but in 2021 the tables were turned when The Vixen unexpectedly became the answer to a question on another ITV quiz show.
Ryan, then 39, was delighted to discover that her appearance on The X Factor: Celebrity had earned her a place on Tipping Point, hosted by Ben Shephard. Rather than letting the moment pass unnoticed, she immediately celebrated it with her followers.
“MADE IT, MA!” Ryan wrote alongside a screenshot showing her name appearing among the possible answers.
She also thanked Shephard and added hashtags for both The Chase and Tipping Point.
Tipping Point Turns Jenny Ryan Into a Quiz Question
Jenny Ryan was delighted to be featured in a question on ITV’s Tipping Point (Image: ITV)
The question took viewers back to Ryan’s unexpected venture away from the world of competitive quizzing in 2019.
Contestants were asked which Chaser had reached the final of the celebrity edition of The X Factor that year.
Three familiar names were offered: Jenny Ryan, Shaun Wallace and Mark Labbett.
The correct answer was Ryan.
By then, viewers knew her primarily as The Vixen, the formidable quizzer who had joined The Chase in 2015. Ryan’s own biography confirms that she had already built an extensive quiz career before becoming a Chaser, including appearances on University Challenge, Mastermind and Only Connect.
But The X Factor: Celebrity gave audiences the chance to see a very different side of her.
From The Chase to The X Factor Final
Jenny Ryan took to social media last night after her name appeared in Tipping Point (Image: Twitter)
Ryan competed on The X Factor: Celebrity in 2019, swapping the Chaser’s desk for the stage and demonstrating a singing ability that surprised viewers more accustomed to seeing her battle contestants over general-knowledge questions.
Her run eventually carried her all the way to the final. Contemporary ITV coverage listed Ryan alongside Megan McKenna, Max and Harvey and V5 among the finalists.
Ryan ultimately finished third. Megan McKenna won the competition, while Max and Harvey were runners-up.
The achievement made the Tipping Point question particularly fitting: two years after her singing run, Ryan’s crossover into another television genre had become quiz-show trivia in its own right.
Fans Tell The Vixen She Had Already ‘Made It’
Ryan’s playful declaration that she had finally “made it” prompted affectionate responses from followers, many of whom insisted she hardly needed a Tipping Point question to prove her success.
“You already made it love, we’re all so proud of you,” one follower wrote.
Another praised her X Factor performances, telling her: “You were beyond brill on X Factor! We were all super proud.”
Others focused on her singing ability, with one telling Ryan: “You have a great voice Jenny,” while another simply said: “You were so good.”
One fan even joked that they would “pay anything” to see fellow Chaser Shaun Wallace compete on The X Factor.
Jenny Ryan’s Career Beyond The Chase
Jenny Ryan took party in Celebrity X Factor in 2019 (Image: ITV)
The Chase in numbers (Image: Express)
Although The Chase remains the programme most closely associated with Ryan, her television career stretches well beyond her role as The Vixen.
Before becoming one of Bradley Walsh’s Chasers, she competed on University Challenge and Mastermind and was part of The Gamblers, the team that won the third series of Only Connect. She also worked behind the scenes as a quiz researcher and writer.
Her connection with The Chase itself began before viewers ever saw her sitting opposite contestants. Ryan has previously explained that she worked as a question writer on the programme’s pilot before eventually joining the Chaser line-up in 2015.
Singing has also surfaced repeatedly during her television career.
In 2017, Ryan appeared alongside fellow Chasers Anne Hegerty, Shaun Wallace and Mark Labbett on Let’s Sing and Dance for Comic Relief.
And Ryan was not the only Chaser willing to sing when the opportunity arose.
Around the time of her Tipping Point reaction, viewers of The Chasers Road Trip had seen Mark Labbett, Shaun Wallace and Anne Hegerty singing together while travelling to an airport in the back of a cab.
The trio performed John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” although the musical moment quickly became characteristically competitive when Anne and Mark scolded Shaun for coming in with the chorus at the wrong time.
For Ryan, however, appearing as the answer to a Tipping Point question represented a particularly amusing television milestone: after years spent answering questions and trying to stop contestants from winning money, The Vixen had officially become part of the quiz herself.