Has anyone noticed how...odd Noel's been lately? He's been chiding contestants for listening to their partners, telling people to forget games only to then talk about them five minutes later, calling people 'assassins' when they haven't revealed anything meaty in ages, and all sorts of odd stuff like that.

Taking a look at all 330-odd episodes, I've used a spreadsheet to analyse all the 'Odd Noel' behaviour, and the results are truly surprising:

As you can see, he starts off fairly sane, but things start to dip around the time of Aaron's game, decreases further around the time of Kirsty and Pat G, and reaches a then all-time low with the 'Spaz' in Linda's game. Then things improve again, although another dip for the 'hand spaz' in Alan's game, and it's still quite low by August time, when he seemed to believe that he'd been gone for a month rather than two hours, and went into a giggling fit in Lance's game. And since his 'naughty Saturday' with Kelly in November, things sharply decline, and we're in April levels of insanity again now.

I'm getting quite worried, actually. Is Noel finally losing it for good?

Do his choice of shirts correlate with that graph? I.e. better shirts at certain times?

Didn't he say Neil was getting a reputation? He's only had 2 power five reds for goodness sake!? And Joey wasn't even a black widow in the first place.

Sorry but Noel annoys me. Even in the last 10 minutes of games, he is still able to piss me off. I couldn't care less about his "spazz" moments but his attitude to the game and his awful grasp at statistics make me want to throw things at him.

By the way, to what does "Naughty Saturday" refer? Was his date with Kelly on a Saturday in November?

In Adie's game, he said to the Banker something along the lines of "How was your weekend? I had the most deliciously naughty Saturday!"...it was quite literally the most disturbing thing ever.

And we're putting two and two together and getting Kelly from that, are we?

Well, I don't know...I just took it as Noel being a bit weird...

His crap stats have been a feature of the show from quite early on, as have his references to Black Widows, Terminators etc. long after their runs of high numbers have ended.

The "Wakeyisms" are a more recent development, criticising those who deal early while praising those who leave with peanuts for their bravery, but I can't help thinking that the producers are largely behind that as well. After all, the big money games are the ones that get everyone talking about them, and they perhaps expected to have had a £250k winner by now.

Contestants were quite cautious with smallish sums of money in the early days, but now there seems to be a more standard way of playing the game - I don't know if stats back this up but I think deals for less than £10k have now become quite rare. But it's still hard to get people to go on when there's £25k-£30k on offer, as that kind of amount will make so much difference for the majority of contestants. Endemol clearly want more Lynne type games.

As do I.

You do surprise me.

The thing is, Lynne's game was so great precisely because it doesn't happen very often; it was only the second or third time we'd seen a gamble like that, and only the third time someone had gone to the end and won that much. If it happened every other day (as Noel seems to want it to) then nobody would have noticed Lynne and it would have been a lot less exciting.

Yes I agree Daniel, you have to watch the bad games to appreciate the really good ones. That's what the game is all about. Some win little, some win lots.

I agree with the production team likely being behind the shift in Noel's attitude (the show was once about timing but is now all about courage, according to the bearded one) but sometimes he's just rude. I remember in Nev's game, he just kept repeating "You've made a mistake, Nev" and in Steve the chef's game, when the guy was clearly gutted at going too early, he didn't seem to offer much, if any, support at all. He also seemed indignant towards the end of Scottish Alan's game when he dared suggest he'd Deal with the 250k still in play.

You could argue that those who leave with peanuts need praising and consoling more than those who go too early but still leave with something respectable but maybe he could listen to his own mantra of "each game is different" a bit more. Lynne's game was great but if it happened all the time, it would be dull, surely?

NUMBER OF PLAYERS WHO HAVE DEALT FOR UNDER £10,000

Games 1 - 100: 27 players
Games 101 - 200: 21 players
Games 201 - 300: 17 players

In the 28 games we've seen broadcast since game 300, only three people have taken a Deal for under £10,000.

What proportion of these were at the 2-box stage? I suspect quite a lot!

You suspect wrong!

DEALS FOR UNDER £10,000 AT THE TWO-BOX STAGE:

Games 1 - 100: 8 players
Games 101 - 200: 12 players
Games 201 - 300: 2 players

And from memory at least two of the three recent ones (Shed and Simon) were at the final offer. Very surprised there were only two of these in the entire third century of games though!

People definitely seem to be going for it a lot more often with blue/mid-red final twos...Simon's game felt quite odd yesterday, as the majority of people in that situation in the past few months have just taken the gamble, seemingly without considering the offer. Even Sarah today said something along the lines of "Well, I certainly won't be Dealing..."

I have to admit that I prefer it that way, really...four-figure Deals never feel particularly satisfying to me (not that it's my money!), unless perhaps that's all they could have got out of the game anyway.

They are normally games that never got off the ground and the player just wants to take something away from it. Those who have a good start then crash usually chase their losses, and a lot of those who have no luck at all just decide there's not much to lose so they will open their box regardless.

I remember Beryl dealing for something like £3,500 third offer with the quarter million still on the board... admittedly she didn't have much else, but it didn't seem that strange at the time whereas I would be quite shocked to see something like that happen now. If you thought Ingerlise and Donna's games were bad, imagine dealing for that kind of amount and finding the big prize was in front of you!

I think another significant fact is that it took 26 games for someone to win a "blue" sum (Raj's 10p), now we seemingly get at least one per week!

I also remember reading on Bothers Bar in the commentary of 1p Nick's game, someone called him an idiot for turning down £4,500 at the 8-box stage, with £75k still on the board. I'd never consider dealing for that with £75k still there, safety net or not (well £10k was still there too so it wasn't as if there was absolutely nothing else!)!

I agree with Noels odd behaviour, he said in I think Margaret's game about all blue round, only 2 people ever had an all blue round. I think thats what he said I will check