I didn't see this game first time round so didn't mind seeing it repeated. From the front, Graham doesn't really look like Noel but from the back, you wouldn't know who was who! Very strong game up to 8-box with 4 of the Power 5 still in play, but I did think he blew it by dealing £30,030; with 4 big ones there you're gonna be left at least one good one even if you have a poor round, so it was worth going on. Sadly he dealt because of the fear factor but £30,030 is still a nice sum of money! Well done Graham!

Yeah, but the player after Graham would go on to have one of the best games of 2008

Yeah, a lot of good banter and a lot of cool people on the wings - the twins, Betty, Emjay, Andy, Tom, Jo, Maggie... oh and Richard.

There was a lot of stuff going on about the studio being the 'fear factory' at this time, and Noel didn't give the impression of remembering the era fondly, so I do wonder whether it really was one he'd have put in his 'hall of fame'. In fact, someone on this forum posted about the game from the day before (Julie, who sold the £50k box for £5k [I think]), saying Noel just seemed bored throughout that show. In this one, he seemed to be brushing off the claim Graham looked like him and concentrated squarely on the board, and giving Graham a hard time for dealing when he did (although no way would anyone get offered £40k on that configuration, however good it looked).

Put simply, Noel didn't think Graham looked like him (he did look more like Noel than anyone else who'd been on the show at that point) and was trying to hide his frustrations at the lack of big-money wins. Fortunately, his prayers were about to be answered!

Yeah the Deal came a bit of a surprise, I don't know the previous history but from the sounds of things there'd been lots of bad games beforehand. He still got a technical win though, only lost out on ten grand and £30,030 is a huge sum! Then after that came Betty's game, must have been an exciting time for the show...until Richard's game anyway

Found something hilarious in the today's show thread...just because Gaz won £100k in May '06 and original Graeme won £101k in May '07, people apparently thought Graham would win £102k? That'd be far too spooky!

I think £30k was as much as anyone could have hoped for on that board, so in that sense Graham's deal was just about understandable. I think I'd have gone on though as there was a good chance of hitting at least 1 blue.

Which reminds me, I hope £100k Betty will be on Noel's favourites, oh and I pray the 2006 games are up there...

I think the £102k stuff was fuelled by the rumours of a £100k win at the time! When Graham had a really strong board, I thought he'd be the one who won £100k. I was shocked when he dealt and wondered if he won the £100k through a banker's gamble!

To relive the commentary for Graham's game (which was first shown on 06/05/08) click here - Graham's live show commentary 06/05/08

Graham's game was one of those where I thought the deal was quite cautious for the excellent board he had, and I would have been annoyed had it been someone awful like Colleen (god, she dealt £30k on an even BETTER board!) - but the it was good show but a great character as well as the lookalike thing, and he sold his box for 3 times its value anyway, and not too much of a loss.

Looking at the rest of the wings, this 22 seemed so much better than the rest of them from Clive's game, I mean even Richard is memorable for all the wrong reasons, whereas most of the January line up apart from the 1p trio and MJ had anonymous £10k - £20k 5-box deal games it seems. Lots of this lot either seemed to do spectacularly well (Betty, Tom), took a spectacularly bad deal (Richard, Harvey), or won a high blue or orange (Jo, Mark, the twins, Heldy, Andy, Ian, Janie etc) - but lots of good characters like the ones Brick mentioned, plus Mark whose game I was in stitches with despite the game being a damp squib where he topped-and-tailed the board, and only a couple I thought "Who?" about - I have virtually no recollection of Linda or Heldy at all!!

I liked Graham's game, there was a lot of fun banter tempered by a rather good board. If Noel was slightly withdrawn at the time i personally didn't notice

Deal was perhaps a little cautious - certainly it was against the consensus of the wings and the wench - but still a decent wedge, and given this was during an era when the luck tended to be in the Banker's favour it certainly felt like a good result

Great to see the twins again too.

It was great to see Graham's game again because I really liked the 22 at that point last year (with all the people mentioned already). Plus it was a decent game, suprising deal but a technical win.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the game shown today.

Oh, and this year, for the first time EVER...there will be a DOND game on my birthday [Tuesday 18th August]. Yes, it will be a repeat but I don't care...

Here's a pointless fact.

Seeing as the show technically isn't going off-air this summer due to the repeats, and assuming there are no other off-air periods for the show until next summer, then it'll have been on-screen on a regular basis from August 2008 until July 2010!

Of course that period will grow even bigger if they show repeats again next summer (although I suspect they'll have found something else to put in DoND's timeslot during their next summer break).

Well, today's repeat is certainty gonna remind me of how dramatic the ending was

It would be interesting to know if that's happened with any other daily quiz show on UK TV. Does anyone have any stats?

I'd be staggered if Countdown hadn't managed to beat that at some point over its 27 year run.

Just watching £100k Lauren's game, reminded me of that 1p Kiss moment and her surname

To relive the commentary for Lauren's game (which was first shown on 21/12/08) click here - Lauren's live show commentary 21/12/08

That was a truly amazing game and very well played by Lauren to win the £100,000! I wouldn't have had the courage to turn down the £51,000 at 3-box, but Lauren did, and it certainly paid off in the end! Congratulations Lauren!

It was, and right after Lauren, we had another great game

Lauren's game was fascinating - we saw the unprecedented sight of a Banker guarantee designed to encourage a Deal instead of a No Deal, it didn't work, he then broke that promise and made a half-sensible offer, but it wasn't enough, and that was a victory for playing the offer generosity regardless of the stakes.

I remember at the time thinking that without the joke guarantee, that £51k was probably a definite no deal given a minimum 2 box offer of at least £20K but as soon as he made the £3k guarantee, I'd have dealt at 3 box.