During his tenure on Jeopardy!, Trebek sang songs, recited Shakespeare with flair and had killer football knowledge. But the host with the most had a secret job behind the podium that surprised players and viewers! While Trebek stood behind the podium delivering answers and questions and making contestants feel special, he was also a master multitasker. Trebek surprisingly controlled the beeping noise that alerted contestants when the time to answer had run out. Author and journalist Clare McNear, who wrote the book Answers in the Form of Questions, revealed her shock in a tweet. McNear learned of Trebek’s surprising job while talking with Bob Bergen, who hosted Jep!, the kid’s version of the classic game show Jeopardy!. Bergen was in complete disbelief when he learned of this additional task. Bergen shared his reaction when Harry Friedman, who oversaw Jeopardy! and its spinoffs pointed out the button to him and how it was manually operated. As Bergen shared with McNear: ”The very first day, Harry is showing me the podium with the button. I said, ‘Wait a minute, there’s no set time? Do you edit it down so people don’t go, ‘How come he had ten seconds and he had four?’ He said, ‘Nope, and nobody in the history of the show has ever questioned it.’" It makes sense that the extra task of manually pressing the out of time button might not have troubled Trebek. Even when he was sick for two years and getting chemotherapy treatments for stage 4 pancreatic cancer, Trebek was still very devoted to the show and the job he loved. In his recent book The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life, Trebek revealed how he could be so sick and in pain but when he stepped onstage everything changed. “Jeopardy! invigorates me. It’s the strangest thing now with cancer: there are days when I’m just a basket case before we tape. I can barely walk to the production meeting. But when Johnny introduces me and I get out onstage, it all changes suddenly. I’m myself again. I feel good,” he wrote. “No matter how I feel before the show, when I get out there it’s all forgotten because there’s a show to be done. Work to do.” Next, 7 TV Shows Alex Trebek Hosted Besides Jeopardy!
