I didn't see much DoND during the first half of August as I was away, so I was wondering whether Noel had made reference to the start of the new season at all?

For the purposes of the stuff on here, I think it's best to assume that Season 8 started on Monday 30th July (i.e. the first show after the Olympics week, and where the summer break would've been).

I'm going to wait and see what happens on Bank Holiday Monday though, as that's traditionally the end of the summer break and the start of the new Season. So, for example, a new title sequence on that Monday could indicate that they're regarding that as the beginning of Season 8. Failing that, I'll just stick with 30th July as the start.

(Or maybe they're just counting the current shows as still being in Season 7, meaning Season 7 could be extremely long if it runs until they next have a break...)

He hasn't said anything about the new season at all. Unless it was edited out.

Nothing been said so far...not that I have seen anyway....also the clips at the start of each show are still the same ones...do they not usually change these at the start of each new series ?

I think it's been like that with the players (who won big) twice. Two different ones.

from my memory Noel never mentions anything about a new season at all in any show yet to be aired!

They did last year when Noel's beard had changed significantly between the two episodes, and he joked how it had grown overnight.

It's a shame they didn't change the opening titles because when they started putting people's faces in them, I find they're like idents which do the same (a lot of the recent crop of BBC ones did this at first, but as they shortened/changed them, they dropped those elements) and it makes them date quicker and I just want to slap everyone on the titles.

That said, I've been watching regularly for just two years now and I'm just flicking through most shows these days, often just fast-forwarding through the second half. I only watch a full show if there's someone fit in the chair.

Interestingly, I believe that the episodes since 29 October (i.e. the HD episodes after the recording break) are listed as Season 9! I think that means that Season 1 is the first 66 episodes, and Season 2 starts with the Sequencegate games... although even then, Noel referred to "our first season" on-camera in July 2006, in an episode that must have been treated internally as Season 2!

I've made a compromise for spreadsheet purposes - The games following Gold Medal Deal, at the end of July, are now counted as 7B! (as traditionally, the Summer specials have marked the cut-off point for previous seasons, and also it's more useful to be able to look back at roughly equal yearly periods)

I certainly wouldn't be keen on dividing it by filming commissions, that's for sure...