expert Raj Bishram revealed he previously worked as a professional skier before he found fame as an antiques dealer. Fans of the 69-year-old broadcaster will know him from daytime shows such as Bargain Hunt, Flog It, and Celebrity Antiques Road Trip.
The auctioneer got his TV break as one of the expert dealers on Four Rooms, Channel 4’s award-winning show back in 2011. His popularity extends beyond antiques shows, with the presenter also making frequent appearances on Celebrity Eggheads and Richard Osman’s House of Games. But Raj’s life could have been completely different had he stuck to his previous career before he found fame on the small screen.
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Raj Bisham confessed he used to be a professional skier (Image: BBC)
During an episode of Would I Lie To You back in 2021, the expert opened up about his early sporting career on the One panel show. He told guests: “Back in the late 70s, early 80s I was a professional skier in Austria before I was an antiques dealer. I also raced around Europe”.
The Londoner revealed that he was quite the trill-seeker in his youth while training for skiing competitions in Austria. Raj confessed: “I used to practice skiing by strapping myself to the roof of a speeding car. It was part of my training.
“We didn’t have a lot of money so we wanted to get used to going fast so we used to strap ourselves in and go around a racetrack”. He reassured them: “It was actually a trotting track, it was for horse to trot around. I was never on a public road.”
The broadcaster confessed he was strapped for cash at the time and was forced to use alternative methods to train for the contests. He explained: “We didn’t use the mountains in Austria for two reasons.
“One is I would have been a danger on the slopes and the second was we never had the money. We didn’t have to hire the race track, the car was thrown in as it were but it was a special car because it had to have a very long roof rack”.
When he was quizzed about the method to his unusual routine, he revealed: “I was practicing the feeling of speed, we tried to get to speeds between 60 to 80mph. I was held together with boots”.
The expert baffled his teammates when he explained how he would communicate with the driver about when to take breaks from practice. He insisted: “I had poles and we had a system where I would just bang the car to stop,” leaving his co-stars dubious.
However, the TV star revealed his prompt was entirely true as he acted out how he would position himself on top of the car for training.