Not too sure it did, it did make waves at the time to the extent that I even had vague knowledge of such an event taking place, and this was during my wilderness years of paying any sort of attention to the show. It was Noel who forgot about it immediately, bless his cotton beard.

The reveal of the final red in that game is a memorable moment, though. There's an absolute *shriek* from the audience and befuddled faces all around - especially as there were two former 'statsman' contestants present, who knew just how unlikely taking out the last three reds were... and it happened before their eyes in a landmark week. I put the video online somewhere... if you find it, you're a better man than me.

Ironically though, Chris' trainwreck game wasn't entirely unavoidable like say Mark D, or Billy from July 2014 where the banker made absolutely no effort to buy the box whatsoever, as he did get a good offer of £7,500 at 11-box with just the three reds he took out in the 4th round (£20k, £50k and £75k) remaining at that stage of the game - Imagine if he dealt, it would've been the most amazing proveout ever (Though after the shock/delight of being GUARANTEED a complete victory from 8-box, it might've gotten a little bit boring seeing two pointless proveout rounds from then on)

And i cannot believe that games like £75k Kirsty, Johnnie, JT etc. are all a jolly *12* years old as of this week

I also can't believe April 2007 was 11 years ago too, this time in 2007 was the beginning of the end for the "wakey era". £32k Charlie's game is 11 years ago today was an important game which was not only a desperately needed great win after 3 weeks of of bad luck, squandered big wins and outright losses to the banker, but all the big 'wakey era' annoyances like blue chanting, Noel being nasty to players who dealt to early etc. noticeably started to wane from here on in and more characters started to shine after a fairly boring couple of weeks on the wings. There were still a few big gamblers and the ultra-generous offered still lingered for a while afterwards, but by the end of May, the Wakey era itself had well and truly become a thing of the past

11 years ago, Bunney reappeared in Dee's game dressed as the Easter Bunny Dee had a HUGE opening offer of £18,000 after taking 4 blues and £1,000 in the first round, and after a game of mixed fortunes, Dee settled for £10k at 8-box and subsequently destroyed her board in the last 2 rounds

It actually feels a bit funny not having Easter on the weekend of April 7/8 this year, as the last 2 years (2012 and 2007) that have had April 7/8 on a weekend, have had Easter fall on that weekend!

Let's see what happened in past years around this time

In 2006 Maxine played after 11 shows on the wings without witnessing a single blue win and won £10,000 from her box, Fadil joined the 1p club but him and wife just kept smiling and were geniunely grateful for the experience, and Gabrielle got the first ever banker handout as her initial winnings of £1,000 were doubled to £2,000 because it was Easter and Gabrielle was playing for charity

In 2007, Vikki was the second wheelchair bound contestant to appear on the show (although her game was far less exciting than Peter's), Miles had a great win of £26,400, Steve's game had above-mean offers and contestants doing the robot dance and Penny almost did what Keran did 19 months later....if only she'd swapped

In 2008, Things were really starting to go wrong with Janna and Ronnie being cautious and missing out on huge wins in the aftermath of Derek and Bash's trainwrecks, and Bash's game also saw some odd behaviour from Noel, as he actually tried to guilt-trip Bash at the end for not taking the second offer

In 2009, we were seeing the last of the contestants from H2005's game play, with Will and Trudi both dealing at around £16k-ish on £250k or peanuts 5-box boards and being right to do so, Ollie and his short-lived record as the most vocal Hull-ite to appear on the show ( ), and Daimon become the second player to join the infamous 'Nothing Network' after Lee. After the somewhat comedic nature of Lee founding the Nothing network, the novelty was immediately killed by Daimon's game

April 2010 was (IMO at least) possibly the last good month of DoND before the show started to really go downhill, and the month saw the twist at easter produce some interesting finishes and Ramesh's £77,000 win, which was actually the first time the £250k ever came to the table during the month of April

April 2011 started well with £20k Paul and £46k Sophie's games but then hit rock bottom again with the middle part seeing the first ever run of FOUR consecutive blue wins. Things continued to struggle for the rest of the month, but that would all change when May rolled around!

I can't really be bothered doing the rest right now

11 years ago, Jamie dealt at £28k on a 5-box board that was remarkably similar to £26,400 Miles a few days earlier with 2-blues/£20k/£50k/£75k at 5-box, and had an OPW when he found the highest 2 and had £20k on the table just as Miles did!!

A game that was no doubt geared towards inflated offers rather than board strength, but was the start of a great week of games with 3 large wins (2 of which were OPWs and one was a healthy TPW), an OPW for a 4-figure sum which was still a great result, a mediocre but still decent win, and a sting in the tail with a self-inflicted blue win

Looking back at games on April 22nd, this has been a pretty unlucky date as there have only been THREE occasions where a blue win hasn't occured on this date (Andy won £20k in 2015, Jemma won £9k in 2013 and Paula won £13k in 2009, while every other game on this date has been a blue win!!)

Ah, but I bet there hasn't been a blue win on 22 April since at least 2016!

You're right! In fact, last year on April 22, Julian (who was quite a rowdy old codger) played in my DoND series hosted by Jimmy Carr and won £4,000 by dealing on a £100/£10k final-2 and had £100 in his box. He had a pretty low money game with his highest offer being £5,500 and was chasing a £20k game by 11-box, but it was a strong TPW at least

So it's been 12 years since Massimo and the 'boxgate' incident where Clumsy Tom accidentally knocked his box and revealed what was inside it, resulting in ALL remaining unopened boxes to be removed and reshuffled!

Also, 11 years ago, is another long forgotten event that you could say is overshadowed by the events happening around this time in 2006 - Kath had a £10k OPW after dealing on a '4 lowest reds/£50k' final 5 following an extraordinary week of third offer deals (All of which were reasonable deals unjustly punished by a mixture of large numbers on the table and stupidly inflated proveout offers), which was good. But it was also Kath/Roy's game that had the full wing lineup from the Catherine Tate special where Nan played and dealt at £199 at the first offer after losing the top 5 in the first 5 boxes!

It was definitely either Kath or Roy's game as all the newbies who joined up to that point during April where on the wings where present (Wasn't sure if Kath or Craig was in the show as they never really showed position W5, and Kascey - the newbie in Kath's game - wasn't physically seen but her name did flash up on the board at the start). Of course, Leila, Pauline, Graeme, Alain, Alison and Lynn were absent as they were replaced by the actors who opened the first 5 boxes but were believed to be sitting in the audience for the show

Speaking of contestants called Roy, 5 years ago was another Roy who had a classic game where he became the first and only contestant to win £100,000 by dealing! . What a contrast to his 2007 namesake who also played on the last Monday of April and dealt at £49 after smiling through a trainwreck game - His speech when he dealt at the £49 offer was truly unforgettable!

So it's 11 years today since £75k Daniel's game, arguably the strongest game of all time as he kept all the power 5 until 6-box (!!) and being faced with a £750/£50k/£75k/£100k/£250k, was offered a phenomenal £90,000 - which he declined!

In the first box, the £750 came out and the studio went wild as Daniel was faced with the top 4 at 4-box - the best board anyone could possibly have at that stage of the game!! He almost pulled off the first ever dream finish but unfortunately found the £250k in the last box Still, it was hard to believe people were disappointed about being in active play on a £50k/£100k, and Daniel DEALT at the final offer of £75,000, with £50k in his box!

I'm still torn whether Daniel or Brenda had the strongest 5-box ever, as Daniel had the top-4 but still had one blue but Brenda (although she did deal a round earlier) was guaranteed £10,000 at 5-box and had all the power-5 except £100k. Other contenders for the strongest 5-box board ever were £75k Amy (dealt on one of only TWO 5-box boards in the history of the show that had £15k guaranteed) and £1k Esher who had £1k/£35k/£75k/£100k/£250k at 5-box but had one of the most dramatic crashes after she played to the end, swapped away £75k and won £1,000!

The strongest ever £100k-high 5-box board would either be Colleen (£5k/£35k/£50k/£75k/£100k but dealt a round earlier), Michael (£10k/£20k/£50k/£75k/£100k, yet he dealt at a MISERABLE offer of £24k AND with a guarantee of an offer after each box after 5-box!!! ) or Thomas (£15k/£20k/£35k/£75k/£100k at 5-box, but dealt at £40k a round earlier - the banker would've stuck)

Without question the strongest 5 box was Daniel's (both in terms of the Fair Deal and Mean) and the strongest £100k-high 5 box was Colleen's.

Given the Banker's behavior at the time, I'd dread to think what the offer would've been had the £750 stayed to the end in Daniel's game, but in most cases the Banker would have to make a generous offer in that situation after turning down a mammoth 5 box offer. For instance, Esher was offered £28,000 on a £1k/£75k finish after facing a similarly strong 5 box, and Bill would've been offered £26,000 on a £100/£75k finish had be turned down his £80,000 button offer.

11 years ago, Stephen played on just his TENTH show (Oh god, that "Battle of the sexes" thing was so unfair on the men ) and had interesting offer patterns as the banker offered just £400 quid after a 4-blues/£10k opening round!! An equally strong second round saw a VERY generous second offer of £20,400, followed by a mediocre offer of £25,000 with the power-5 there at 11-box, and after losing the £100k, the banker dropped his offer to a sub-par £20k with the remaining power 4, which Stephen DEALT

The proveouts didn't start well, as the fifth offer would've been £44,400 and the final offer would've been a forcing £4,400 on a 10p/£35k finish, but Stephen got the last laugh as he had 10p in his box. That 10p was a bit of a troublesome amount during the "Battle of the sexes"!

A bit late for this, but 4 years and 3 days ago was Jack's game, who was the pretty much the last controversial character by fandom before fandom declined to the point that they didn't really care much about the players. People on Digital Spy pretty much tore him to shreds for providing such ridiculous and useless advice (ie his "stats" of what boxes contained the last few games and him going him going from encouraging a player to decline a reasoanble £40,000 offer to encouraging to player to Deal a lousy £6,000 offer in the space of one game ), and I thought very similarly to them. In fact, I had a lot of strong words for him in his game thread, to the point that I had to edit all of my posts after the game ended so that I wasn't at risk of being banned.

Of course, being such a controversial character on an Endemol game show gave him an easy invite to be on Big Brother the next year.

I can remember Jack looking like he was about 14! Surprisingly, he was the first "young" person named Jack to appear on the show as the previous 3 Jacks were all old(er) men!

Of course, as i mentioned, the month of September has always been the player's kryptonite for much of the show's history. 10 years ago, we were in one of the all-time worst peroids for the show - the first 3 weeks of Season 4 which was endless blue wins (apart from Mike's 11-box deal which backfired) that were all ludicrously covered up by post-game handouts, and the offers were getting so bad that most players had no decisions until at least 5-box!

Between Brian's game at at the start of the new season and Jay's much-needed £20k box win at the end of the first week. There were TEN blue wins, a third offer deal gone wrong, and 3 low 4-figures that were still banker wins, and the only "OPW" during this run was Stacey-Anne's which was debatable due to the hypo-swap, and the only other "player" win was £4k Beryl who dealt at her lowest offer!! It also didn't help that sob-stories were a common feature during this run

On the plus side though, after the fallout from Mike's game, the forum finally started to become more positive and civilised and things slowly improved on the show, and by November, things were finally beginning to look up

11 year ago was the game of Maria's historical £100k win. The studio went absolutely NUTS at the end! Her game pretty much saved the cursed month of September.

September 2007 doesn't seem so bad in hindsight even though it was tainted by the Battle Of The Sexes nonsense and the unlucky games it produced. We still had some great games in the form of £100k, £52k Theresa, £34k Zahida, £26k Alexandra and £15k James the day after Maria, as well as Stuart at the end of the month who had the first ever £425k nightmare round but recovered to a good result and a technical draw! And some great characters like Siobhan, Planet Joan, Ed and Pottsy on the show! (Not to mention some nice ladies such as Zahida, Siobhan, Andrea and Danielle to name a few )

At least people weren't too affected by the bad games during Battle of the sexes, it wasn't until a year later that things really started to go bad for the month of September. If the Battle of the sexes games happened a year later, Theresa would've been utterly terrified and dealt at £20k at 8-box!

Of course the other thing about Maria's game was that it marked the debut of the infamous CJ's short-lived stint on the wings before she was out on ear, never to be seen again due to alleged conflict with the other contestants off-screen, taking the walk of shame instead of the walk of wealth.....oh right, sorry, wrong show!

Her box openings did seem oddly edited too, as they were giving her as little camera exposure as possible, she got no closeups, they only showed her when she opened her box or someone standing beside her opened their box, when she was chosen to open her box, they abruptly cut straight to her box opening and didn't even show her reaction after her box reveal, Noel didn't welcome CJ as the newbie or even mention her in Maria's game nor did he mention her being gone in Bernie's game just over a week later, and was it true that her voice was edited when she opened her box in Stuart's game?

This time 4 years ago, the usual September slump hit with a vengeance after a great August. The highest win of the month was just £18,000 and like September in most other years, it was just a full of bad-mediocre games with minimal OPWs

September 2014 also saw an event that marked the beginning of the end for DoND - the abrupt scrapping of the weekend shows for the second time, seemingly for good this time. After this, there was only £0 Susan and Alan Carr's celebrity show broadcast on a Sunday in early October and that was it, and from there, DoND started being on less and less with the show taking a break over Christmas and New Year's, the weekend shows not returning at the start of 2015, and then from March 2015 onwards, the show started taking breaks almost every week due to horse racing telecasts, and would be off screen for months on end during the middle part of the year

Contrast that with the summer of '06 and 'Double Deal Week', when several million people just couldn't get enough of Deal or No Deal. I was on holiday in Spain - as I announced at the time with a whole thread dedicated to this incredibly important issue, in something like the second post I'd ever actually made on the forum - and for so many reasons, those few weeks were unforgettably brilliant, with Double Deal Week bouncing around in the mix of great memories as I look back on it tonight.

Stevie the 'black widow', daniel4389, Nessie, Kestral, Wayne the...Fireman? Something like that, who had £999 in all his offers and a terrifically disappointing game; Wakey, Carlton, J.R. Them were t'days.

That all said, I'm pleasantly surprised at the little flurry of activity we've had here in the last week or so. I had pretty much signed-off over the summer, and wasn't expecting to post at all after that. You never know what's around the corner...

It was Wayne the brain who dealt at £999, I think he was a fireman but i vaguely remember now. Ashok was another great character from around that time too. I've seen his game on YouTube, and i really admire the guy. He had a great sense of humour and he just seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself throughout his whole game even though he had a disappointing result. Would make an interesting contrast to that miserable old crow who played a few shows later (She only just broke a smile for split second when Noel mentioned "semi-quickie" in Ashok's game, though she did look nice in that top she was wearing )

Who can forget Daniel4389 in his heyday, he was a character and a half that young fella! Especially his swooning over a certain female contestant who stood in the middle of the east wing and played in May 2006. I can also remember him (and a couple of others on here as well) going nuclear when they starting putting men in wing position E11 in early 2007, having been an all-female position up until that point

Oh god, how the hell did i manage to forget mentioning Jean the Grinning Reaper in this post?! She was one of the big ones on the show at that time. I remember she couldn't stop revealing the top 3 in her first 5 shows, then she started to dilute a bit and became more mixed. Some other memorable moments from Jean when she wore a necklace with the number 13, in one game she gave some advice and said something like "Don't listen the audience, they want you to crash and burn!" and of course, her making a surprise guest appearance on the Halloween show weeks later!

Back on the subject of CJ, i can also remember some week after her abrupt departure, an old-ish guy named Pete played, who had been on the wings the same time as CJ and used a system by picking numbers that he asked his fellow contestants to pick for him. I can seem to remember him referring to CJ as "OJ" when he picked the number she chose for him. He could've done it to avoid making any direct references to CJ, although he did seem a bit off with the pronunciation of some of the names (e.g. he called Ioanna "Joanna" and Danielle "Daniella" etc.)


By the way DANIEL, i just went back and read your closing post on £5,100 Pete's game thread!

On this day 9 years ago, Aurora became the 24th member of the 1p club after an unlucky game with NO offers worth considering

On the plus side, it's also 12 years since "Break-A-Leg" Jeff's classic game and 11 years since Col's underrated £30k win . Thinking back to early season 3, oh god, I remember thinking how great August-October 2007 was for the show (despite being dampened somewhat by the "Battle of the sexes crap"), but then in November it just seemed to turn to pot out of nowhere