Tyson hooked on Weakest Link's Anne

Weakest Link presenter Anne Robinson has gained a hard-hitting fan in the US - boxer Mike Tyson.

Tyson came up to her at a ball game and said: ‘‘You’re one mean lady,’’ she said, adding that she is delighted by the response from American fans.

The 56-year-old London journalist-turned TV presenter believes the show has both cross-generational and cross-cultural appeal.

‘‘There is a viewer who is over 50 who just gets very excited about me in leather,’’ she said from the US studios in Burbank, California, where the show is recorded for NBC television.

‘‘There are also mothers who sit their babies in front of the set because somehow the baby laughs.’’

Robinson loves choosing her clothes for the show, favouring the architectural pleats of Issey Miyake and the structured sleek of Jasper Conran.

The hour-long show, which airs Mondays in the United States, will run on Sundays and Mondays in the autumn.

Robinson knows only the most basic information about the contestants - age, marital status, education and hobbies.

She’ll wait until after the first round to refer to those facts. But her all-purpose ‘‘Who Slams’’ - the producers’ name for her ‘‘Who is this ...’’ and ‘‘Who is that ...’’ comments - are always on launch alert. Viewers and producers offer their own, but most are Robinson’s.

‘‘I’m quite happy to take suggestions, but I turn them into my own,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ve never had scriptwriters. I’ve always written my own stuff. Other people’s humour is other people’s humour, so it’s very much me.’’

Robinson is now famous on both sides of the Atlantic.

After enjoying hit status in England since the show was introduced by the BBC last summer, Weakest Link developed an immediate following in the United States after its debut in April.

While it isn’t the smash hit that Regis Philbin and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? has been for ABC, Weakest Link usually ranks among the country’s top 20 shows.

Patterned closely on the British version but with heftier cash prizes, players work with and against each other in pursuit of up to $1m (£650,000), winner take all.

Answering questions individually, contestants can collectively amass up to dlrs 125,000 (£80,000) each round. The group votes out one player at the end of a round, ultimately leaving two people in the fray.

Before the taping of each episode, Robinson studies the questions she’ll deliver at a rapid-fire pace, often grappling with the differences in American and English pronunciation. (She cites ‘‘vitamin’’ and ‘‘schedule’’ as examples.)

Although the show’s popularity continues after nearly 200 episodes in Britain,

American audiences can be more fickle. However, executive producer Phil Gurin is confident that Robinson’s ‘‘innate gift for nuance and variation’’ will hold viewers’ interest.

Gurin describes the Weakest Link as ‘‘mean with a wink’’, and believes audiences like it because Robinson is ‘‘only articulating the kind of things you’re thinking when you are sitting on your sofa at home’’.