£5,500 Penny (October 2008), £8,800 Michael (January 2009), £2,000 Mary (November 2009), £5,500 Chantal (December 2013), £1,500 Michelle (April 2014), £2,000 Roy (May 2014) and £22,200 Peter (June 2014; mainly in context of his Box 23 decision) should also be on that list.

You're not telling me that dealing at £5,500, when you could go home with ten pence, is a bad thing to do. Surely?!

Again, cutting losses - could have had more, but doesn't want to go home with nothing. Why is this so hard to grasp?
Same thing for Michelle in 2014. Even Roy, although £2,000 was a torrid offer.

Peter, well...now you reckon risking £12,200 when you could win nothing is silly?

I would say that if you're alright turning down several thousand, with pence possibly on that table, you must be financially healthy enough that a few thousand is nothing to you. It's probably a large portion of all the money most of us have in the world - and to risk such massive amounts, for me, is nothing better than reckless, or even thoughtless.

So tomorrow will be 5 years since a jackpot win handed to the player on a silver platter, 9 years since one of the worst banker handouts ever, and 10 years since an opinion-dividing contestant who meditated on the floor and used a fake mobile phone to speak to her personal banker!

Re PJ nine years ago -



- A slightly younger KP

From the purist's perspective, PJ was the tenth 1p Club member. As it was, he won £15,000.01...so he sort of wasn't. The banker not offering any money, with the 1p and £75,000 left, I think was outrageous, in the context of the show.

Then a year earlier there was Maxine, boy did people have a strong opinion of her either way!

Yesterday was 10 years since Simone's extraordinary game, where she arrived at the table, believing she had TWO-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY-THOUSAND SHMACKERS in her box!

Sure enough, Simone No-dealt £25,500 at 5-box with £1/£5/£10/£75k/£250k. The £250k went in the first box, followed by 2 blues and she was left with a £1/£75k ending which yielded a rather insulting offer of £15,500!


Simone very bravely no-dealt the final offer and sadly, the ultimate gamble didn't pay off and Simone left with £1 She really deserved the £75,000 with her attitude, but she took her defeat really well

And ironically enough when Simone was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 2013, she walked away with £10,000 even though she used Ask the Audience and used 50/50 on her £20,000 question, leaving her with an option that 4% of the audience voted for against one 51% of the audience voted for (no prizes for guessing which one was the correct answer ):

https://m.youtube.com/results?q=million ... 0play&sm=3

I guess Deal or No Deal put her off taking risks.

So exactly one decade ago, we were in the madness of 'Double Deal Week', where there were 2 shows a day for a whole week and an extra show on the Sunday! It was a weird week for the show, with two shows a day for a whole week and extra shows on the Sunday meaning that players were coming and going so quickly (In fact, in Eileen's game, the following Monday after DDW, there were only 7 people on the wings left from the lineup in Joan's game the day before DDW started!)

DDW was also notorious for having a run of unlucky games, most notably the three blue winners who ended up with £10. At this point, it had been very mixed fortunes so far, with Richard getting off to a great start, then crashing, then cutting his losses by dealing for £6,100 and discovering he had £75,000 (I believe that Richard held the title of the worst ever underselling for a £75k box, right up until £5k Barbara in March 2010), Louise had a healthy win of £30,000, but missed out on an offer of £50,000, and poor old Carlton became the three £10 winners of DDW


Today was a good day in DDW though with Daz (who seemed to be a bit of a marmite player on here) getting a nice OPW after dealing for £19,900 at 8-box, then demolishing his game in the proveouts, and Jo, who dealt for £31,000, but the banker got away with a sneaky victory when she had £35,000 in front of her!

I remember the £5 pocketer, Scott. He had one of the piss easiest jobs I can imagine. Editing home videos to remove 'dead air'. I can do that with my eyes fastened shut and my hands lost to disease.

Come to think about it, Wednesday had become an unlucky day to play in late season 1. After Dave W, There were no OPWs in a Wednesday until Helen in September, and during that time, the only two players who played on a Wednesday that either didn't win a blue or undersell their box were £20k Linda who sold her box for it's exact amount and Spiky Paul who sold a £100 box for £9,500 but missed out on £84,000 and got crucified by Noel at the end (And even the significant wins like Patricia, Fran and Lance had the sting in the tail as they still undersold huge amounts in their box!)!

Don't think it would've been a sting in the tail for Lance...it couldn't be for any sane person, surely?

Of course, Wakey considered it to be one of the worst games ever SOLELY because Lance didn't take the final gamble.

So it's 10 years since Ron and Debbie


Ron was a great character and went all the way to win £20,000, and gave all his fellow contestants each a lucky rock! The final round was very dramatic, with the studio going ballistic when the 1p and 10p were revealed, then the atmosphere went totally silent as if it was all over when the £100,000 was discovered! Also, this was Joseph's final game in W10 before he fell ill and we didn't see him again for quite a while

Debbie got off to a great start but then butchered the red side and took every other red except for the £250k, then she dealt at £15,000 only to discover she had the £250k all along! This game was the first time anyone had a 1p/£250k ending (and it would be the only time it happened until £250k Alice nearly 3 years later), and it would also be many months before the £250k would make another appearance on the pound table after this!

Wakey wasn't sane though, Ben

Wasn't there another game a woman had the £50,000 and the £100,000 left and she dealt at £75,000 and had the £100,000 in her box. Then afterwards people started having a go at her for not taking the gamble.

£118,000 Marlene another example.

Dear me. That's really doing her a disService

Very good!

So this time a decade ago was Shirley's overlooked classic game. She wasn't very memorable on the wings, she only did about 12 shows and was only on our screens for just over a week due to double deal week. But her game was certainly memorable, where she VERY bravely declined £55,000 (her final five were 50p/£10k/£50k/£75k/£250k), it almost worked, but sadly, she lost the £250k in the last box!


She faced a final pairing of 50p & £50,000, where she still got a courage-rewarding final offer of £20,000, which she accepted rather than risked going home with 50p, but it ended on a disappointing note when she had £50,000 on the table all along, £5,000 short of the amount she declined earlier!


Shirley was the first player since Morris to no-deal beyond 5-box with the £250k still in play and we wouldn't see anyone else do it until David J, months later!

So it's been a whole decade since Janelle's unusual game, which is probably the only clear-cut example of a someone playing early due to not being liked by the other players. The reasons behind Janelle's unusual behaviour in her show and why she wasn't well liked by the others remains a mystery

I haven't physically seen her game, but apparently, not many players wished Janelle good luck when they opened their boxes and they seemed very hesitant/reluctant to make their way over to Janelle at the end of the show. There was also further evidence of Janelle not being liked by the others going by posts by contestant Pennie (who played while Janelle was on the wings and posted in here at the time), which seemed to indicate that she had problems with Janelle