Viewers accuse Chase of being FIXED

ITV game show The Chase has been accused of being fixed by eagle-eyed viewers who observed that a chaser appeared to be given an extra second.

During the final round when Chaser Mark Labbett was playing to beat the contestants, viewers noticed that the time on the clock seemed to take longer than it should.

One viewer Rachel Leach tweeted a video that seemed to show the countdown clock freeze on the 10 second mark, writing: 'Added an extra second on for the Chaser! 10 seconds turned to 10 seconds.'

But despite the alleged glitch the team of four Maddy, Sheila, Brad and Pete won and took home £27,000 between them. 

@PeterTheGreat29 also accused host Bradley Walsh of speeding up his questions to fit more in during the Final Chase round.

He tweeted: 'Bradley Walsh reads the question a lot faster for the chasers rather than the contestants.'

While Chris Floyd posted on Twitter: 'The show is a fix! ITV try and explain this one!'

The glitch appeared when Bradley asked the Chaser: 'The dance of the Willis is a sequence in which opera?'

Mark got it wrong by guessing Coppelia, but the team also guessed incorrectly that it was the Nutcracker. The correct answer, Bradley revealed, was Giselle.

However it was the timer's strange behaviour during this question that attracted comments from viewers as it was seen to flicker at 10 seconds and then remain at '10' rather than counting down to nine.

But it seemed their conspiracy theory was just that as chaser Mark Labatt explained it was purely down to editing.

He tweeted: 'It was a pickup or rerecord of a garbled question. Normally the editing is seamless but not on that one.'

When Twitter user Chris Floyd argued that it 'looks dodgy to viewers' who were watching, Mark replied it was 'too big a time difference to hide in the edit.' 

The Chaser had to answer 20 questions correctly to beat the contestants and extra time would have been helpful but regardless, the contestants won against him and split the prize money between them.

A spokesperson from the programme told MailOnline: 'There was an error on the clock on last night's episode of The Chase. This error happened during the editing process and not in the studio when the game was being recorded.'

Watch the scene below to decide for yourself! 

This article was first published on dailymail.co.uk and is republished here with permission.