Sam Quek appears on The Chase for Soccer Aid, joins charity quiz team

sam quek appeared on a special edition of The Chase for Soccer Aid on Friday, May 29, joining David James, Harry Aikines-Aryeetey and Maisie Adam on the ITV teatime quiz show. The team was aiming to raise money for Unicef, with ITV also lining up Soccer Aid programming for the week.

Soccer Aid on ITV

Quek, a Liverpool-born former hockey player and TV presenter, took part as ITV built toward Soccer Aid 2026 coverage. The charity match was scheduled for Sunday, May 31 at the London Stadium, with kick-off set for 6.30pm British Summer Time.

Her appearance on The Chase fit into that run of programming, but the show also drew on the kind of cross-over line-up Soccer Aid has used before: a mix of sports figures and entertainers competing for a charitable prize. Quek had already taken part in Soccer Aid last year, which made her return part of a familiar pattern rather than a one-off booking.

Quek and Tom Mairs

The broader interest in Quek’s appearance comes from what she has previously said about family life with husband Tom Mairs. She spoke about suffering a baby loss in January 2020 at 10 weeks, telling OK! magazine that it was a “strange one” and saying the experience “took a toll” on both of them.

Quek said they were “weren't able to speak about it properly” and that the loss made her keep news of her later pregnancy private for as long as possible. She said she stopped getting too excited because she had “what if?” in the back of her mind.

Isaac’s birth story

Quek later described a traumatic pregnancy scare before the birth of her second child, Isaac. A week before her due date, she was rushed in for an emergency C-section after waking in the night with strong contractions and bleeding. She said: “I'd been having recurring nightmares that if this birth went to a C-section, I was going to haemorrhage. I just felt like something was going to go wrong for this one, I don't know why.”

Isaac was safely born, and Quek said: “When his little face popped up over the curtain, it was the realisation that he'd finally got here, was safe and was going to join our family of three to make it four.” That personal history explains why a quiz appearance this week carried more than routine television value for her audience: it came from someone already known to viewers through both sport and the family experiences she has discussed publicly.