Noel Edmonds has said that he turned down TV programme Deal Or No Deal three times before the producers convinced him to front the programme.
The Swap Shop presenter was living in France when he approached to present the programme and he had been shown the French version.
In the end he said he had one condition and that he wanted to tweak it so that the audience would empathise with the contestants.
Speaking to RTÉ's Ray D'Arcy Show the Deal Or No Deal celebrity said that he was proud of the show that ran for 10 years and that it had changed people's lives, including his own as it was love at first sight when he met his "earth angel" wife Liz on the show in 2006.
He said they moved in together after six weeks and even though they had never planned to get married: " Two years later I proposed in Russia and we got married the following July."
He was asked about going into the jungle with Im a Celebrity Get Me Outta Here, he explained his teen son convinced him to go into the jungle which he enjoyed despite the diet of beans and rice leaving half the camp with stomach upsets and him 4 kilos lighter when he was voted off.
But he said it was very boring as you would just sit there for six or seven hours doing nothing and he missed his wife Liz very much.
"My 15-year-old son Harrison met Dec (of Ant and Dec fame) who asked him to persuade me to go into the jungle and teenagers can be very persuasive"
He said he had been asked before to go on the programme but that it clashed with The Deal Or No Deal schedule.
In preparation for it, he practiced by holding a tarantula in Thailand, and watched the show.
The presenter poked fun at himself when Ray D'Arcy asked how a 70-year-old could look so young and he said it was beard dye, that he could send to him.
