shame it wasn't

A dreadful woman.

I missed the whole game, due to road traffic

But wowey! Julie did what I was thinking!

Am I thinking right, first win above £35,000 since 2nd July?

See, being patient does work

I'd known since the summer that there'd be a Power 5 win in early October, and only found out recently that it'd be through a swap! After the very fast intro today and the early timings (compare Julie's 3rd offer which came through at 4:31 to Meena's 3rd offer which came through at 4:37), I wondered if it would happen today. Everything was set out for it to happen - the bubbly and confident attitude of Julie and the atmosphere in the studio which was certainly coming through my TV screen...

Julie was a nice character, and it was nice to have a fun and bubbly contestant. I'd much rather have that than a player who has a sob story and starts crying everywhere when their game starts to go wrong. The non-monetary final offer of a swap was very controversial when it first happened to PJ on a 1p vs £75k final 2 back in May 2007, but nowadays I don't think many people are too bothered by it as DOND has thrown up so many twists and turns over the last eighteen months that no money on that final 2 is sort of something you come to expect now.

However, the difference between Julie and PJ is that Julie had a very aggressive and feisty attitude and one that was asking for the banker to be mean enough to offer no money at the end there, unlike PJ. I reckon Julie would've no dealt the final offer even if it had been a decent monetary one, and would've also swapped to £75k. The non-monetary final offer just helped her on the way.

After the poor games and low wins we've seen over the last several months, it was nice to see her win some big money, and hopefully it's shaken the banker up a bit. This game reminded me of Betty's in many ways, mainly due to the attitude both Julie and Betty both shared, and of course the fact they both won a Power 5 amount from the box (albeit Julie swapped and Betty didn't). Hopefully the next couple of weeks of games will be good, as they were after Betty's.

It's also worth mentioning that tomorrow is 2 years since Barbara swapped away £100,000 to win £1,000! Anyway, well done Julie!!

When was the last time a mega win was treated as a disappointment? It was probably me lamenting Graeme's No Deals back in 2007!!!

Oh, eleven straight blues now. This is getting suspicious now!

Well done Julie on swapping for box 7!
I wonder how much it would have taken to get her out of the chair if the banker had made an offer at 2 box.
Also, if she had won £5 I'm sure there would have been many complaints about the lack of a cash offer at that stage.
Would the banker have offered her some kind of consilatory amount again if she had swapped to win the fiver?

I always wondered how people would've reacted to PJ's game if he'd won £75k... I don't think it's fair to offer no money like that, but with a player such as Julie who is obviously going to no deal pretty much any offer and is then wanting to swap her box, I can see why the banker would pull such a tactic. The thing with PJ was that he didn't strike me at all as the sort who would've gambled a good offer on his final 2. Julie got no money because she was very dismissive of the previous offers (and rightly so!) whereas PJ got it because he swapped at the beginning and the banker was fooling about basically...

Hopefully now this will herald the start of some big payouts now instead of a banker backlash which usually follows after a big power five win

Didn't like her aggressive attitude, but what the hell she won big, that SWAP offer blew up in the bankers face and we get the big power five win we have been crying out for for ages

Well done Julie on £75k, enjoy every penny

I think she looked like her bottle was going, her reaction to the last cash offer suggested she'd prefer a way out, and she did say she went on cos she had no choice. She was all over the place, feisty and confident one minute, ready for blubbing the next. A good cash offer at 2 box would have seen her out, I'm sure.

She did have four rubbish offers and one mildly poor one - I'd have loved to have seen her reaction to a good one...

Well, that game sure made me eat my words. Finally, a Power 5 amount is won, and in awesome fashion to boot. That was one hell of a swap!
This game goes down in the books as a certified



Congrats to Julie, and enjoy the money. You deserved it !

Worst show of the season, (or maybe ever) how come brilliant brave players win hardly anything and then someone like this who doesn't even make a brave decision gets £75,000, ridiculous.

She may have £75,000, but she didn't win it properly
oh well at least the cheque to herself won't bounce

may i ask how?, she didn't do much except turn down relatively low offers, choose boxes and take a swap. (and of course act like an idiot on TV)

She may well have taken the big risk you consider so desirable if she was given any, she certainly gave the impression of just that... and apparently the Banker decided he couldn't buy the box and that instead it was better to create another talking point... I'd much rather have seen her reaction to an offer of twenty grand, but she was the beneficiary of circumstances and the eight-box offer would have taken half of the recent players out...

Those last 5 minutes just proved to me why I was so hooked with it in the first place. I'm back on it now, and I feel terrible for doing so...

YES! Great game! So happy finally a power 5 win! And a decent one too! Not just a deal at £37,000!!!

Well I'm sorry but I didn't enjoy that either - mainly due to one thing. The SWAP-only offer at the end. I thought they'd learnt from PJ's game when they threatened to do it to Dave (who then got offered 21k), but oh no. The whole thing just felt contrived, not like that moment of jubilation when Lynne/Chris B/Betty's boxes were opened or Lance took out the last blue to leave 100k/75k etc.....she didn't have to face a tough 2-box decision since it was obvious she was going to swap beforehand. It didn't feel earned by having to make a brave all-or-nothing 2-box no-deal.

And I got the impression she was no Wakeyist either - she seemed mentally shot by the time the £100 was revealed and I reckon she'd have taken 15 - 20k on that finish without too much thought. At least it spectacularly backfired on the banker.

They couldn't have got out of it if she'd have won the fiver like on PJ's game with no LTL any more either so that would have been it. And that would have caused no end of trouble. If it had been me I'd have refused to leave until they offered me some money!

I fear the vast majority wouldn't have swapped either due to Noel not being able to shut up about how much a red is "due" on the table! (Plus many don;t like the whole swap concept anyway!)

I agree with James, that was almost a brilliant game but then the swap was a pile of *beep* and totally ruined it. Yes I want to see big wins but I want to see the players "earn" their money, not just get handed it because the producers want a big finish. What was even worse was that Noel gave the offer as if it was a punishment for her dismissing the £2,500 offer the round before, which was indeed one of the worst offers ever...

It doesn't matter what the attitude was, or how likeable the player was...FOR GOODNESS SAKE WE FINALLY HAD A MASSIVE WIN!!!

Now let's hope we can build on this!