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Monday, June 27, 2005

Goodbye Twice Nightly 

Richard Whiteley has died. This makes me sad.

Most of you will likely be entirely unsurprised that Countdown has always been one of my favourite programmes - it's where I got my love of anagrams and wordplay from - and the numbers game has to be one of the most subtle ways of improving basic arithmetic skills for an entire country ever devised.

Here are some happy memories of the show :

  • Sitting down to watch it as the first show on the exciting new Channel 4 (much better than Superted as your first S4C show, GD...)
  • One summer at school, spending my pocket money on a big pad of paper so that I could play along "properly." I've watched so much of it I don't need the paper any more, at least not for 9 letters!
  • Having a pretty serious argument with Lily and Sarah over how you're not supposed to ruin it by shouting the conundrum out when you've got it, just say "Yes" then compare notes at the end.
  • The BASTARD edition! And the 831 edition. (I'm going to have to reconstruct that one - update later on.)
  • Richard Stilgoe, Stephen Fry and Geoffrey Durham as guest presenters.
  • Building it into my study day timetable, then cursing (only slightly though!) when they extended it from 30 mins to 45.
  • The 5-minute version they used to show at the end of the breakfast show - bitesize Countdown!

    I'm now a little sad that I never appeared on the show - I auditioned about 10 years ago, but I was quite ill at the time, and didn't do myself justice. I might never get the chance now. I really really hope they don't cancel it, but it'd be very difficult for anyone to follow in his footsteps.

    Goodbye Mr Whiteley. You will be missed.

    2 comments
  • Comments:
    I thought it was w*nker edition as he said "a pair of w*nkers"
     
    There was a "wankers" episode too, but the bastard one was the one that sprang to mind when I was typing this.

    I think I've remembered the 831 now as well. There may be an easier method than the one I've got (in which case I've remembered the numbers wrongly - you could actually prove that the solution was unique).

    831

    100 75 4 6 8 8
     
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