Grigoris Arnaoutoglou

Grigoris Arnaoutoglou (Greek: Γρηγόρης Αρναούτογλου; born December 17, 1973) is a Greek television host, television personality, actor and radio producer. Best known for his work in television, Arnaoutoglou's breakthrough came really early in his television career back on 90's when he was hosting the road talk show One Wonderful World (1992-1998) in a Greek small television network.

He is also known for hosting the morning daytime entertaining show of MEGA Beautiful World in the Morning (2003-2009) or other successful shows or game shows as Much on Sunday & Even More on Sunday (2005-2007), The Rentier (2007-2009), Money Drop (2010-2012), My mum cooks better than yours (2015-2017), Who wants to become a millionaire? (2022-today) and others. In 2013 he entered the late-night television, on ANT1, launching the late-night talk show The Kardashians (2013-2015). From 2015 he hosts the late night talk The 2Night Show with Grigoris Arnaoutoglou on ANT1.

Arnaoutoglou was born in Munich in Germany on December 17, 1973 as a child of Greek immigrants. On an early age he and his family went back in Greece on their place of origin Megali Panagia, a small village in Chalkidiki. His father, Tasos Arnaoutoglou, was a car mechanic and his mother, Kiki Arnaoutoglou, was a dressmaker. When he started school his family moved to Thessaloniki.

At 14 he started attending a technical school and at the same time started working as an electrician in Thessaloniki. In 1990, while he was still 16 years old, he made his debut on media as a radio producer on Panorama 86 FM with a late-night show after midnight.

In November 1991, he made his television debut as a host on daytime game show The Great Escape on Makedonia TV while he was still 17. The show run for only one season. In 1992 he created one of the most successful project of his career One Wonderful World with Grigoris Arnaoutoglou on the same television network. The concept was a really simple idea, the host, one microphone and a camera. Arnaoutoglou started walking the streets of Thessaloniki and was talking with people on the streets. The show was running once a week and very soon met a huge success, while the network Makedonia TV wasn't a big one and the ratings were low. Over time Arnaoutoglou started also travelling in other places out of Thessaloniki and also other countries for an episode of his show. On the same time biggest Greek television networks started making shows like One Wonderful World in their own programming.

On the following years Arnaoutoglou continued signing contracts with Makedonia TV. In 1995 he also started hosting the daytime talk show Here Thessaloniki, as a duet with the anchorwoman Rania Thraskia, every afternoon on Makedonia TV. The show run for three seasons until 1998 when Arnaouglou stopped his contract with the network after 7 years.

While he had different suggestions to continue his career in Athens, he decided to sign with the third channel of national television network ERT. In his new television basis he started hosting two different shows the daytime talk show Day Afternoon for two seasons and a weekly travel talk show In a wonderland, a spin-off of One Wonderful World, which run for one season.

In 2000 he decided to stop his career in Thessaloniki in order to chase a bigger career in Athens on the biggest Greek television networks.

In 2001 he signed with ANT1, one of the two biggest television network back in that time, as a co-host of the prank show Plugged In next to Nikos Stergiou and Thanasis Viskadourakis. The show didn't recognise a successful and suddenly cancelled after a few weeks. Moreover Arnaoutoglou made his television acting debut as a guest, portraying himself, on ANT1's comedy One plus one for an episode. After the cancellation of Plugged In Arnaoutoglou created and launched a new spin-off of his classic travel show, One Beautiful World, the Like the snow. The show wasn't also successful and cancelled after few episodes.

In 2002 followed other two unsuccessful tries in his new career, Chilli a talk show with five different co-hosts (Arnaoutoglou was one of them) and another travel show Non-stop. He also took part as a guest on the comedy Girlfriends for ever playing himself.

After this circle of tries his contract with ANT1 concluded and he signed a new contract with MEGA the second high-rated television network in Greece back then.

In 2002 MEGA decided to launch the Greek version of the successful reality show The Farm and they found in Arnaoutoglou the ideal presenter. Moreover they asked him to create a new version of his 90's big successful show One Beautiful World with a higher budget. The Farm met a big success from the first episode while the new travel talk show Beautiful World concentrated also really high ratings. After the end of the first season of The Farm MEGA decided to renew the show for a second season right after the first while they decided to launch it as a celebrity edition, something really new for Greek television reality. In 2003 after three successful programs Arnaoutoglou signed a really powerful contract with MEGA.

• Makigiarismenoi Fovoi (Greek: Μακιγιαρισμένοι Φόβοι), January 2012, ISBN 978-960-496-633-2^[2]