"People are gullible,” starts Chris Segar, before rephrasing. “Well, trusting more than gullible, because the world works from trust. If we were all suspicious, it wouldn’t be a very nice world.
“We all tend to trust, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I prefer to live in a trusting world than a suspicious world.”
It’s a curious position for someone who has seen some of the most duplicitous and fraudulent parts of human nature for a large part of his career.
For almost 20 years, the North Wales-born presenter has headed up a crack team of experts, helping out the poor, disadvantaged consumers of Wales to get justice and peace of mind through the popular ITV Wales consumer affairs programme, The Ferret.
But now Chris is getting set to move on. The last series of The Ferret featruing Chris starts tomorrow and the final programme with him onscreen airs this Friday.
There will also be a Time Of Your Life special the following week, with Chris recalling his early life in Prestatyn, his early career on newspapers and his time with HTV Wales and latterly ITV Wales.
Since The Ferret began in 1996, Chris, along with a team of researchers, producers and co-presenters, up to and including current reporter Hannah Thomas, has helped literally hundreds of consumers across Wales to get a fair deal.
The investigative role has suited the former newspaper reporter and, interestingly, he says has its roots in his early career.
“Working on local newspapers is where you meet your community and I think that contact for a journalist, that experience is invaluable. You get the kids from Fame who want to come here and be on the telly next week and they haven’t talked to people.
“Being on The Ferret was a return to how I started, because I started locally as a newspaper reporter on a local paper in North Wales in the 1960s in Rhyl.”
From nearby Prestatyn, Chris was schooled in Rhyl and started his newspaper career in the town where he was a part of the community.
“In those days you were really involved and the local paper was like the Bible there, everyone read it and you weren’t dead unless you’d been written up in the Rhyl Journal.”
He recalls speaking to grieving relatives to get details on deaths for write-ups in the newspaper, where a commitment to accuracy was everything.
“It didn’t matter whether they were the dustbin man or a town councillor, everyone had their few paragraphs in the paper, and everything had to be right because this was this person’s life.
“That familiarity that I got with dealing with people in tender situations and having to get the facts right was probably the best training I can imagine any journalist could have. You don’t get that in media studies. It’s about people, it’s a about people when they’re tender and vulnerable and about representing their views.”
The sensitivity of those cases is something he’s called upon more than once in The Ferret.
“The Ferret deals with people who have got a problem. They’ve got to a certain desperate point where they’ve phoned The Ferret.
“Sometimes they are horrendous problems, they’ve been really stuffed and they’re living in a half-built house and their family’s there and they’ve been let down by some builder who is completely incompetent or some of them fraudulent. You really feel for people like that.”
Helping get justice for the maltreated has seen Chris and the team address everything from massive issues down to very small ones.
“We did get a million pounds back for a man once from an expensive boat which wasn’t up to scratch and he got a settlement. You have to remember that one, don’t you?
“Then there was the £5 toilet seat that split in two when the lady sat on it. It was a discounted wooden toilet seat and the daughter sat on it and it split in two.
“What made the story, of course, was that we did the reenactment. We glued the seat together again and got the young lady to sit on it, albeit in her faux leather trousers, and of course it split again, which made the picture.”
After 376 Ferrets, Chris has decided it’s time to start a new chapter. A keen painter, he is seldom happier than when he’s with his watercolours, and his future looks paint-splattered, whether here in Wales, at his second home in Brittany or even further afield.
“I did some watercolours in France the other week, but I’m going to Australia next month and I will be doing some big paintings. I’ve had a couple of exhibitions, one in Cardiff this year, and I had one in France two years ago, so who knows, maybe I’ll get an exhibition in Australia.”
But it’s not time to call ‘cut’ just yet – he also has a view to stepping back into the frame when it’s called for.
“I decided to leave – I’ll be 70 next year, so why shouldn’t I stop doing it every week? I don’t want to work at that place for longer.
“But I’m still looking forward to doing things if people ask me. I love the process, I like making programmes, they’re fun things to do.
“I’ve always said I’m not a pretty boy presenter, I’m a grizzly old man – but I’ve never wanted that.
“The real work is knocking on the doors, out there talking to people.
“The cult of the ‘TV personality’ I don’t have a lot of time for. On my headed paper, it says reporter – that’s what I am – I present a programme, but I’m Chris Segar, reporter, and it’s always been that.”
The last series of The Ferret starts on Sunday on ITV Wales at 8pm, with Chris’ last episode this Friday at 8pm. Time Of Your Life is on Tuesday, October 29
