The Governess, Anne Hegerty, on autism, quizzing and her challenges with everyday life

Anne Hegerty is best known as her ruthless television alter-ego, The Governess, who regularly puts wannabe-quiz champions firmly in their place on The Chase. But the former journalist, who was diagnosed with autism later in life, reveals that while quizzing comes easily to her, she finds everyday tasks extremely difficult.

Every morning the chaser pours herself a large cup of coffee and sits down to complete 25 quizzes. She says it's "the easiest part" of her day.

"After that I do the difficult stuff, like going upstairs and having a shower and getting dry. And then putting some clothes on and making sure they are clean, and then actually getting myself out of the house.

"All of that is hard work," she told the BBC Access All podcast. "It feels like a I've climbed a mountain."

Hegerty, 64, found a love for knowledge early on in life.

"I was a nerdy child and I discovered that I could learn things off by heart," she says of the skill she hasn't lost.

"This morning I was trying to get back to sleep, so I decided to reel off American presidents working backwards. And by the time I got to Lincoln, I thought…I obviously don't want to sleep and I just got up."

Hegerty turned that skill into a profession when she joined the hit ITV quiz show The Chase in 2010 as The Governess, in a role which sees her alternately intimidate, deride and occasionally flirt with contestants to put them off their game.

Her 12-year stint on the show led her to appearing on the 2018 season of I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, Brain of Britain, Mastermind and the Australian version of The Chase.

But she has faced huge challenges behind the gloss of her TV career.

Hegerty was diagnosed with autism aged 45, after she watched a TV programme about the developmental disability and recognised some of the traits in herself.

She experiences sensory issues and struggles with loud noises when she's tired or stressed.

Daily chores take huge amounts of energy for her to complete and when she is feeling particularly stressed, she has to follow instructions which break down household tasks, step-by-step, like sorting out her washing.

"It'll say 'go upstairs, take washing bag, put on floor, sort out tights, put in this container, sort out hot wash, put in that container, take bag downstairs, put tights in washing machine'.

"I have to just write it all out. I need a lot of time to kind of get all my neurons lined up and pointed at something before I do it," she says.

Before joining The Chase, Hegerty says she was "really struggling" having lost her job as a copy editor and proof-reader after two decades.

"I was good at the proofreading, but I was not good at actually getting the thing finished, parcelling it up and sending out an invoice," she says.

Her "low point" hit in 2008. Hegerty was behind on rent, unopened bills littered her hallway and the bailiffs turned up.

Listen to Access All on BBC Sounds

On the latest episode of Access All, listen to Anne talk more about life as The Governess, being diagnosed with autism in her forties and her theory about why bailiffs are like vampires...

Plus BBC News correspondent, Sean Dilley, describes the heartbreak he's going through having retired his guide dog, Sammy, after 10 years together.

Fortuitously, around this time, an employee from her housing association also visited and realised Hegerty needed help.

"She told me, 'don't worry, we'll fix this'," Hegerty recounts. "She got me a social worker, a lovely bloke called Jeff."

Jeff helped Hegerty access funding from her utilities provider to help pay her bills as well as applying for other benefits including Jobseeker's Allowance and Disability Living Allowance.

"It just gave me a breathing space where I could work out what was going on," she says.

Hegerty's love for knowledge hadn't abated and it was around a year later she discovered the UK's high-level quizzing circuit.

She turned up to her first quiz in Liverpool as an unknown. The BBC happened to be auditioning quizzers for the second series of Are You An Egghead? and Hegerty gave it a go. She filmed the episode and ended up coming third.

"At the time I didn't realize what a tiny, incestuous world quizzing is," she laughs. "Soon enough everybody in quizzing knew I'd done really well. They were like: 'Who is this new woman?'"

Hegerty went on to the British leg of the Quizzing World Championships, where a chance encounter with a fellow quiz aficionado made an impact.

"He told me that he had just finished making the pilot series of a new show called The Chase, and he said 'you should watch it, it's going to be really good'."

That tip-off came from Mark "The Beast" Labbett, who has been on every season of The Chase since its inception. When the chance to audition for its second season popped up, Hegerty went for it - and the rest is history.

Looking back, Hegerty says she is glad she sought out her autism diagnosis because it gave her chance to reflect on how her brain works. It also gave her insight into how neurotypical people behave, including those she quizzes against.

"I look back and there are things that I resented at the time but I now think, 'actually, they were trying to be nice'," she says. "Everyone's just trying to figure it out."

You can listen to the podcast and find information and support on the Access All page.