TV Greats: Countdown by shoutingatco.ws
This is a guest post by Jenny MacDonald, who occasionally blogs about her life here.
With the surname MacDonald, I’ve heard every tedious joke about the fast food franchise. But sometimes I just need a McD’s breakfast. A day in 2005 was one such day. I walked in and the local paper stared back at me, with a photo of Richard Whiteley on the front. He had died.
Despite hosting it for nearly twenty years, Countdown has continued without him, and thank goodness for that, but for many months it was impossible to even watch a repeat of the show without wanting to burst into tears. That is how integral Richard was to the show.
He was the first man to appear on Channel 4, and his glasses were so huge they had their own dressing room. Carol Vorderman, looked about 20 years older in 1984 than she does now, and some other woman did the letters at the time. It was all about Richard and his gentle humour and offensive ties/shirt combos.
Like all of the best shows, the premise is breath taking in its simplicity, but unlike (for example) “Deal or no Deal” this show actually requires skill to win.
For those who have been on Pluto for the past 30 odd years (bad news if so, it’s no longer a planet), the name of the game is to make the longest word possible out of nine randomly selected letters. These are picked by asking Carol Vorderman, or in recent years Rachel Riley, to pick either vowels or consonants.
Sample conversation:
“I’ll have a consonant please Carol.”
“Y.”
“Er, because I’m playing Countdown.”
This actually happened, and even more shocking, Carol didn’t clip the young lad round the ear for insolence.
There are of course hours of fun to be had when the letters make silly words, like POO or BAH or BUMMING. (The last one didn’t happen but I have seen photo mock-ups of such hilarity.)
There are also rounds with numbers, and some smartarse always tries to pick five small numbers (target: 973, haha good luck) to use, or alternatively pick all the big numbers (100, 75, 50 and 25) and are confronted with a target of about 6. (OK not really, the targets are always three figures.)
You don’t need to use all of the numbers to get the answer, something I have enjoyed telling people over the years, including my own mother, who had been labouring under the impression that to make 123 you had to somehow use 100, 10, 2, 3, 7 AND 1. (If it is possible to do that, just… shut up.) [Ed's note: 100 + 10 + 2 + 3 + 7 + 1 = 123]
My late Grandma was a massive fan, but watching with her was fraught with peril. I lost count of the amount of times (usually over Christmas) when I ventured a word on the letters round only to be told in no uncertain terms:
“THERE IS NO ‘T’! SHHH.”
And this is another part of the beauty of the show: Old people and young students both bloody love it! The audience has an age gap that would impress Rod Stewart and Bill Wyman, but all have one thing in common: their passion for the show.
As a student I remember storming out of a “lecture” in disgust as the lecturer had turned up but wasn’t lecturing, muttering “I can’t believe I am missing ‘Fifteen to One’ and ‘Countdown’ for THIS…”
I was hard-core about the show. I celebrated like I had won the lottery if I got a nine letter word (total times it happened ever: 4). I regularly made the target in the numbers rounds (once memorably beating Carol who needed extra time!) and often got the Conundrum.
The Conundrum is a nine letter word jumbled up that the contestants go head to head on against the clock, and there is often a CRUCIAL COUNTDOWN CONUNDRUM, which determines the result of the show.
It’s just occurred to me I have forgotten the most important character on the show.
No lads, not Susie Dent and her special guests in dictionary corner, or any of the more recent hosts (Des Lynam, Des O’Connor and the best – the marvellous Jeff Stelling from Sky Sports).
Nooooo, the clock! It has undergone many a makeover (a bit like Carol) but it’s always consistent, ticking down the thirty seconds until “der-der-der der-der-der de-de-de BONG” time is up, PENS DOWN.
And you never see the second hand go up to the top again.
It’s the greatest enigma on telly.
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Ah Countdown, for a large part of my life, always there in the background.
As a child it would infrequently find its way onto our tv, usually when the offerings on the BBC and ITV were less than enthralling. So if it wasn’t Maid Marian, Is that a fact or a whole heap of other goodies that were on then, it tended to be on.
Fast forward a few years to when it was Ready Steady Cook, Coutdown then Today’s the Day.. probably the pinnacle of tea-time viewing, alas, without the benefit of social networking to enhance the experience… but then, we didn’t need it then!
My last memory of Countdown was knowing you’d had a late night when you were going to bed and it was on in the wee small hours. A rare experience these days only felt when you find ceefax on BBC2 or even worse – the BSL variants of boring shows you wouldn’t watch without someone gesturing wildly in the corner.
Not seen Countdown for years but for me, it has been there throughout my life in one way or another. There aren’t many shows which have this type of resonance!
“We” (meaning my mother, who I don’t live with but I somehow feel the need to claim joint ownership) own the Countdown game. You get all the cards you need and an electronic clock which lights up and does the noise.
We played it on the weekend, actually – I had to insist we played it “properly” though.
This meant making whoever is choosing the letters (even if they are playing the role of Carol – an analogue to being the banker in Monopoly) ask for the vowel/consonant in the correct manner, filling the time while the letters are being cleared off the board with mindless questioning of what people get up to in their spare time and breaking out in hysterics as soon as ‘NHS’ is spelled out by chance (I feel the need to wipe a single tear away now, just thinking about it).
We even had a Dictionary Corner: I am not sure how they do it on the show but I had to enlist the help of the internet on that one. Still, it was good to know we could have had ‘WASPIEST’ if we weren’t so thick.
Good freakin’ times.
I got to the quarter-finals a few years back. Well, a lot of years back. Five wins and then pasted to high heaven in the knockout stage. Good days though, had a lot of fun.
I spent far too much of my final year at university watching Countdown, however it was all worth it for the joyous day that I worked out the conundrum (armypiano = pyromania)!
Also, my housemate had a big crush on Rachel Riley so I sent her a message before his birthday and she sent him a signed photo and a handwritten card with a lovely message. Gotta love Countdown!