I'm setting this thread up a bit early so pre-show discussion can take place in here, and also it means that you can comment on the show whilst I'm typing the intro for it!!

This will hopefully be a great show... last year's had Jon Culshaw doing the introduction, the "Find the 1p and each player gets £250 and a bottle of champagne for each member of the audience"... where David J then took out 10p followed by 1p! He then went on to have a final two of £10k and £250k and dealt the final offer of £70,000 and had £10k in his box!

Will the 2nd anniversary show be just as good? Find out on Saturday at 6:30!

It may not have gone unnoticed that I am now sharing the today's show commetaries with Kes to give his fingers a well-earned break... I can't believe how many commentaries he's done!! He's done a fabulous job and still does... he's not going anywhere or getting bored of DOND, it's just that we agreed a little rota for the commentaries would be a good idea, as it adds some variety to them and also gives his aging fingers a rest. I'm doing Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and he's doing Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

I expect there will be many twists, surprises and treats on Saturday night - I am very much looking forward to it!! Will enjoy reading everyone's comments throughout the show.

Can we break the record for the number of people online at any one point?! It was previously 116 in June 2006 due to a load of Google search engine bots going on the site at once. That record was broken for David J's show when we had 186 users online during the show. The record came close to being broken again on the day of Amanda's game when her game wasn't broadcast, and then we had another possible record breaker on 7th January, when Laura became the first £250ker. The record still remains at 186 during David J's show though. His today's show thread gathered a massive 23 pages... can this thread beat that? We'll see!

As usual, it would be appreciated if NO spoilers are posted in the thread during the show.

Roger wins £1,000,000

Right well, I cant see it being that great because it hasnt been advertised at all... allltthhoouughh on the plus side it is over an hour long.

It'll have to go a very long way to be better than last years show which was amazing.

Yes his thread was the longest ever and it was such an original show as it was the first anniversary. I'm not sure if this year's could do better or not.

Who's it going to be? Charly, I hope.

All it'll take is a 3rd offer deal for it to become the longest ever thread with all the dealers arguing how sensible it was and all the Wakeyists saying what a cop out it was.

I doubt that'll happen. virtually all 3rd offers barring 7.5K Sarah and athe odd few were caused by inflated offers. the offers aren't inflated anymore.

Given it's the joint longest timeslot for any episode ever, there's no way we'll get a boring game, I think! My guess is Ajay for tomorrow but I dunno for sure.

Still feels weird that they're five months behind us, I don't think they'd have even had Rodney's game shown on TV yet when this was filmed. I can't wait to see it, though, I bet it'll be great - hopefully with a big win!

I was thinking it must have felt strange to be filming those Halloween shows in early June!

I can confidently tell you that there is a HUGE twist to today's show...

It's a very long time since we've seen a third-offer deal - think it is true that they have become much less generous recently, and partly for that reason it's become the done thing for contestants to dismiss the third offer in a similar way to the first two.

In the Halloween week shows due to the five-box twist they seemed to be keen not to even tempt anyone to go at the fourth offer! While nobody wants to see the show dominated by early deals (well, apart from H and KP perhaps ) the early offers have to be meaningful or otherwise a lot of people will think they might as well just switch on at the second break...

Ooooh like there going to forget about the Anniversary show and have a normal game? That would be a big twist...

I don't want the show dominated by early deals, although I would have completely understood it with early 2007 banker behaviour. You have aptly summed up why we shouldn't have no decision at all early on, though. And I also think that a moderately substantial number of 'safe' players means a big gambler stands out, increasing the excitement derived from such games. When big gambles become almost obligatory, as Noel would wish and as in January we got, the show descends into boredom. Likewise if there are none.

You can insert your own arguments on the (de-)merits of gambling here.

Alex is dead right to point out that the offer patterns were the origin of almost all third offer Deals. Of course more recent 'safe Deal' trends have been very much 'targetist' in nature. (Tying these up; when was the last £20,000 third offer?)

I doubt we're in for an early deal. With a big timeslot, it allows more of the show to be shown rather than loads of editing. I so can't wait for it!

A 65-minute timeslot almost certainly means both extra padding and a game that goes the distance.

Oh my lucky stars! I knew it! They're going to dance to Chubby Checker and twist again like they did last summer arn't they?! And then play a game of Twister instead of Deal or No Deal!

That would quite literally be the best thing ever if that were to happen!

Col and Danielle both got offered exactly 20k at the third offer - the last person to get offered MORE than 20k at that stage was Stuart's 31k on the best board ever - over a month ago!

This is so exciting I can't wait for it to start!

At 6:33, DOND is finally starting!! Why is it late!!

The announcer says how the top prize is £500k...

22 identically sealed boxes, none of which contain a quarter of a million pounds, yes it's Deal or no Deals 2nd anniversary!

Happy Birthday!

Noel is looking very dapper today.