I'd argue that Corinne was even more determined than Doreen, actually. I doubt Corinne would have dealt where Doreen did; in fact, I can't think what amount would have caused Corinne to deal with £250k still on the board.

Fun fact: When Al removed the tissues from his head, there was one wayward tissue that remained on the back of his jumper for maybe about a minute longer before he spotted it. (I bring you the behind-the-scenes scoops that no-one else dares!)

Oh, and it's nice to see a stats-lady (Linda) arrive on the wings for once! Pretty much all of the stats-influenced players to date have been male.

I could point out that Jennifer got £52k in active play on that board but given the size of the 2-box offer, I think we can dismiss those offers as anomolies to the normal generosity of offers.

When you think about it at 5 box the middle amount is the only one which is actually meaningless. It's both part of the perfect round and the nightmare round so it's significance can only really be judged after the second box of the round is opened and determined to be higher or lower. Given the neutrality of that box it's funny how often it seems to be the first hit of the final round.

Did anyone else notice that in the proveout, the £100k disappeared on the on-screen graphic about 2 seconds before Jean opened her box ?

Yes, and yes. This was a classic case of the Banker claiming a TBW out of a TPW with inflated nonsense (and maybe it's because we're looking due to the BB scoring system but how many times have we seen proveout lies conveniently just over double the deal?!?). I've seen £20k offered on that five-box configuration before, and I've seen £26k Dealt on it!! I'd have expected £30k, or a stingy Banker might have played up the importance of the lower reds and offered £24k (the sum of the amounts taken out in the round - bet he'd have done that if it was £5k instead of £3k!!!).

From this recap I think it is clear that Noel is torn between sympathy and 'putting on a show', and the producers are defining the latter in a horribly manipulative way. Perhaps in the heady days of 2005-6, when this show first arrived in this country, popular attitudes were so strongly in favour of financial risk and 'living the moment' that this definition was accurate. It strikes me as astonishing to think that these attitudes could still hold more than two years into a recession that is directly traceable to the inherent failure in these attitudes defining business and society. Noel must know this, for he has recently revived the Christmas Presents format with more than a nod-and-a-wink (as I understand it) to said recession. And he must have a certain populist moral code, for he has conceived and hosted a format built around the concept of being a bit of a populist moral crusader.

To put it in his own terms, has he got the courage to be true to himself, and stand strong against the pressure placed upon him? If he has, he should leave this show. His reputation is strengthened again, he is no longer in even the 'rich man's financial trouble' he might have been in before, he no longer needs this show as he did in 2005. Perhaps the show needs him, but that is irrelevant to this discussion.

As this is commentary on Al's game, I'll conclude by saying that £19k might have been a better Deal for him than £20k, but I didn't even realise it until after the £20k was offered, for it was at once stingy-looking compared to the last one and dealable in its own right, yet I hadn't seen the last one as dealable. Even I, a staunch opponent of 'the game starts at eight-box', didn't think that one through! Reminds me of a player called Chris who was offered £18,888 at 11-box with £50k, £100k, £250k and the £1k-£10k block, then had a £50k/blue/blue round and dealt £22k which I thought was a rubbish improvement for the best possible round without dodging the top three, but thoroughly decent in its own right!! Also I thought of Donna's board, she got a tiny bit more for a fractionally worse board and I thought that was perfectly dealable (in an era with better late-game offers than most of the current ones too)... and both of those had £250k so I was awfully relieved to read the recap to see that it didn't go that way, and instead the proveout reminded me of Marcus's from back in 2006, taking out the backups first only to still get an inflated five-box lie, then destroying the board in round 6 anyway!