Yahoo News MP Jess Phillips would love to go on 'The Chase' and loves a 'trashy' quiz show
Labour MP Jess Phillips says she would love to go on The Chase and says for her the 'trashier the better' when she's watching quiz shows.
The MP for Birmingham Yardley also had a surprising suggestion for a new law if she became Prime Minister, as she talked to Kate Thornton on White Wine Question Time.
Asked what she would do in her first 100 days if she became PM, Phillips told Thornton that she would start a complete overhaul of social care in the country and a launch a commission into violence against women and girls.
Read more: MP Jess Phillips: 'I've got to make violence against women a mainstream issue'
"I also might try and make some funny laws," the 40-year-old said. "Like anyone who takes a minus offer on The Chase has to go into a forced labour camp."
WATCH: Jess Phillips on married life, her love of quiz shows and being phoned by the Prime Minister whilst getting her nails done
Thornton asked the her how she found time to watch the ITV quiz show with the MP admitting she works at least 12 hours most days and on Saturdays.
The MP is the shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, and also ran briefly for the party leader role eventually won by now leader Keir Starmer.
Phillips admitted she is 'a bit of an insomniac' and gets up really early to work, then has a lull in the afternoon when she takes a break until after dinner - when she is working from home at least.
"Not in the days when I'm in Westminster," she said. "I'm just all over the place." She said she watches the quiz shows to recharge her batteries.
She told Thornton: "I'm a quiz show fanatic, honestly. My favourite TV shows are really rubbish quiz shows...
"They're not rubbish, actually. They're brilliant. And I love them all. But the trashier the better, the more stupid the premise, the better."
Saying she would 'love to go on', Thornton said she was going to message host Bradley Walsh straight after the recording to tell him he had to get the MP on.
Phillips has a plan to 'hustle' them on the show though, saying she would deliberately not do well in the cash builder round, when contestants answer questions to collect money to take through to the next rounds, so they would think she was not very good at quizzing.
"And then they'd offer me a massive amount of money, and I'd be like: 'Boom. I'm really good at quizzing.' I love a quiz. I absolutely love it," she said.
This year the TV show won in the Daytime category at the BAFTA TV awards. Phillips said: "I'd not heard of hardly any of the higher brow dramas that were on but I was like: 'Wow The Chase! I got really excited."
She also said she loves ITV's Tipping Point and that she watches it with her father-in-law so there are no 'awks' moments of what they should do when they are together.
"I love it," she explained. "The more stupid machinery involved, I want part of it."
Phillips said it would be more embarrassing for her to be on a show and not know the answers though, especially if she was asked something about a prime minister and she didn't know it.
Read more: The Chase's Anne Hegerty learns she is related to the Queen
She explained: "Then everybody would be like: 'Well, that's shameful.' I was an answer on University Challenge, and I didn't get it. My husband got it.
"He was like: 'It's you.' I was like: 'Oh, yeah.'"
Phillips, who has been an MP since 2015, explained to Thornton she 'definitely has a life' and her happy place is laughing with her girlfriends, which she still does regularly, living in the community she grew up in.
She told Thornton she and her friends lived 'in and out of each other's houses', with a group of her seven best girlfriends and all the husbands being friends too.
"I don't go out to the pub so much anymore," she said, "because people talk to me about politics quite a lot when I'm in the pub. And that's a bit annoying.
"My happy place is sitting around laughing with my girlfriends. So if I didn't do that, then I'd be very miserable all the time."
WATCH: Jess Phillips on being a girl crush
