Just now clocked that this starred America Ferrera, who was in the Barbie movie.

17 years ago was the game of VENTRESS, with one of the most memorable openings to a game ever......

Noel: I need you to confirm that you chose box 16 at random before the game began

Stuart: No I chose, er, box FOURTEEN, at random!

What followed was a flurry of laughter and a full-on Bradley Walsh-esque meltdown from Noel as Stuart put Noel on the spot to get his spiel right!

In a unique game that never really got going (if memory serves, the game peaked around £7k or so, which was a very low peak for a Laura-era game!), Stuart went away with a neat £1,000, and was possibly the only game in the history of the show with a SWAP instead of money offered at 5-box!! The swap-only offer would make an appearance again the next day, and turn out to be a FAR more influential decision in the game!

I recently watched VENTRESS's game on YouTube and the bit that made me crease up most was when at 2-box Noel rhetorically asked "So, is it £1,000" and Stuart replied "yep" before the box got opened

17 years ago this week since Bunney, first ever winner of 50p Dennis and *beep* Star Jane. The dates match 2007 until the leap year too! God that makes me feel old!

The word beeped out was 4 letters long and began with P by the way

Especially considering that the last leap year that started on a Monday (i.e. with February 29th being on a Thursday) was 1996! 2028 will be the next leap year, which means that we've now basically done a full rotation of the "leap year calender" since 2000!


1996 = Leap year that started on a Monday
2000 = Leap year that started on a Saturday
2004 = Leap year that started on a Thursday
2008 = Leap year that started on a Tuesday
2012 = Leap year that started on a Sunday
2016 = Leap year that started on a Friday
2020 = Leap year that started on a Wednesday
2024 = Leap year that started on a Monday
2028 = Leap year that starts on a Saturday

Jonathan Bunney...I know I wasn't especially kind about him as a kid on this forum, but he was very much a 'look at me! Look at me! Give me attention! Give me all your attention!' kind of character, which I guess is fine if you like extroverted people...

Unashamed Tory blooded Trevor B tripped and fell into a 1p win eighteen years to the day, 01/03/2006. Of course, everyone following the 'sequencegate' fiasco knew exactly how it was unfolding. The deep depths of the DOND 'iceberg' might put forward the theory that the crew had full awareness and steered his ship for him in the form of poor forcing offers.

Me on that day? Turned away from school as a few teachers couldn't clear the snow off their driveway. This remained the case for the rest of the week, taking in my 12th birthday. That was a good time.

To this day, I thought there was something odd about Noel's cadence when he revealed the "Swan pee" in Trevor's box. In that moment he seemed completely unsurprised, even blasé, when he flipped the lid, and not to mention the way Noel was practically lecturing Trevor into taking the £99 offer at 2-box (albeit to no avail) - did Noel know that the 1p was in there from the start?!?!

I know it's a long shot, but was Trevor in on this whole "sequencegate" as well? Just the way Trevor went from being visibly shattered and looking like he would crumble into a deluge of tears if he tried to speak more than 2 words, to suddenly looking all jovial and chipper moments later when the others poured in to console him as the credits rolled - surely no one bounces back that quickly, do they?!?!

Bunney was one of those contestants who I had VERY changeable feelings about - I went from finding him funny, to finding him just overrated and annoying, to having fond memories of him again and being reminded of the good times of the show. Ultimately, I found Bunney to be more of a "small doses" type of character, as I did find him likeable and funny, but his antics would wear out their welcome.....

I mean...I mean he might not have selected box 1 if he knew it contained a quarter of a million pounds...

[Bunney song tune]
Bunney’s his name,
Singing was his game.
They thought he was funny,
But he won lots of money…

It was the other Daniel who I remember passionately hating him!

I remember that now! I'd forgotten the other Daniel not being too fond of him though. I think Bunney either became, or had been at some point, an organist at a church just across the harbour from me in Portsmouth. I've listened to him on YouTube actually - he's not bad at all! A man of many talents, being annoying chief among them

I remember daniel4389's posts from around this time in 2007. Bunney, £50k Buddy and Mystic Rich were his favourite "whipping boys", if memory serves. I remember it being Dan in particular being utterly reviled by Mystic Rich being the first man in E11, which up until that point had been all-female and was home to some of the best female contestants who played during the shop's early days!

If I recall, there was similar outcry a month earlier when Leanne who played before Bunney was only the second woman to stand in the male-dominated position W1 since Lisa who played during the show's "post-umbilical" phase in 05. It didn't take long to get used a man in E11, but a woman standing in W1 always looked kind of odd to me - even with that period around 2011 when W1 was a predominantly female position, I still couldn't get used to it (plus there not being much "eye candy" in W1 probably didn't help either )!

Eighteen----oh bugger, ahem, right, CUT, we go again in 3, 2...

Nineteen years now since that fateful day for DoND's favourite bird-lover; I hope she's had better luck since the show than she did on it!

And another year since Nick became the first player ever to deal at the third offer, beating the Banker in the process as he took home £9,000, the maximum amount possible from a game which promptly disintegrated in the proveout phas-----

What?

Oh...oh right, erm...well...right, I see.

I mean, come on, if it had been £40 he'd have taken it!

On this day nineteen years ago, it was the turn of Jenni to play, and she did what Nick should have done...she dealt at the third offer!
Hers was £26,000, a fairly generous sum on a board whose mean was just over £44,000; of course, it would in later years become known as 'The Guv'nor', but, in these precious, innocent early times, no such nonsensical expressions were used. It was £26,000, straight down the line, no psychological warfare, a fair offer on a strong configuration.
Jenni accepted the offer, which I think was quite a sensible choice to make in the circumstances, but the proveout phase wasn't especially kind to her - only the £3,000 and £100,000 disappeared in the following round!
I'm not entirely sure how genuine the Banker's hypothetical offer of £42,000 would've been in live play, as the board at that stage was not much stronger than it had been at twenty-six!
If that raised a few eyebrows, though, what came next was surely ludicrous: two blues and £1,000 taken from the board, and with five boxes left - £10, £10,000, £50,000, £75,000 and £250,000 - the offer apparently would have been £76,000. The mean was a shade over £77,000; again, in live play, one suspects the situation would have been rather different.

As it happened, Jenni was left with £10 or £50,000 at the end, and had she declined the final offer of £20,000, it would have been the fifty she took away. Whether she was happy with her winnings I've no idea - in that era, of course, players could be devastated to take home vast sums of money if they hypothetically might've had more - but her game was a welcome departure from the gloom-fest of the previous two days!

19 years ago today, Pat played - she was as mad as a box of frogs, but she did leave with £3,000 from a rather hectic game played at low stakes throughout.

Pat began by talking complete nonsense about numerology and magical connections and other related quackery, then took a fancy to Noel - waxing lyrical about him being really special and having a close connection with her, obviously through her being on the show, which did at least produce a funny moment when Noel ran off to hide behind one of the wingers to escape from her obsessive clutches! From this starting point of clinical insanity, however, proceedings gradually became more sedate...

The jackpot went in the first round, the offer £2,200, swiftly declined; the penny and two medium reds in the second round, Banker stuck at £2,200, this offer scoffed at by all, and declined also in short order. Third round, a good one, £1, £1,000 and £500 disappearing; up went the Banker to £8,400. To this, Pat at least (and at last) showed some respect, but after a moment or two of deliberation, her mind was made up, and she elected to NO DEAL.
The fourth round was wonderful - 10p and 50p going - with one small exception: the £100,000 went too. The Banker dropped his offer, quite unreasonably, to £6,000, and this was met with the kind of scornful, derisive tittering that only those who were alive before the 2008 financial crash will recall with any degree of detail. Pat said NO DEAL.

Things didn't go her way in the next round, though, as she managed to find both the £50,000 and the £75,000 - and, a matter of minutes after casting aside £6,000, she was left to ponder an offer of £2,300. If the reaction to the former offer was strong, that to the latter was almost incredible! One wonders how much luxury people grew up surrounded by, without ever being aware of it, to get to a stage in life where they felt comfortable treating thousands of pounds as if they were but pennies.
Needless to add, Pat's response here was as it had been throughout: NO DEAL.

On to the final round, and finally it seemed things were looking up! £15,000 disappeared in the first box, but next up was £50 - and three boxes remained: £100, £3,000, and £35,000. A two out of three chance, then; all she needed was to avoid that thirty-five thousand, and she'd be sure to receive an offer that she might - just might - deem suitable.
And the £35,000 was duly revealed.

With £100 or £3,000 left, the Banker complimented Pat; it 'almost hurt' to make this offer, he said. It was £1,000. Pat didn't waste any time: NO DEAL.

The Banker phoned back, and offered the swap; Pat accepted, and box 21 was swapped for box 5, and Noel opened box 5 to reveal £3,000!

So Pat departed with - presumably - just about enough money to buy a second-hand set of tarot cards, or whatever else she might've been into, and - presumably - not enough for her time on the show to have felt worthwhile in any way. But, in making up one small section of the vast patchwork quilt that is the show's history, she will always be the 57th contestant to have taken part in Deal Or No Deal.

Nineteen years ago today, Gavin played.

The opening round wasn't too bad, a few blues and the loss of £15,000 and £100,000, and Glenn was in customarily miserly mood; offer £3,600, response No Deal. Next time out, £75,000 and £5,000 went with another blue, and the offer was £4,000, to which Gavin again said No Deal.
On to the third round, out went £35,000 and £1,000 with a blue, and this time a much more pleasant offer of £9,900. No Deal, said Gavin.
Then the jackpot disappeared from the game, and the offer dropped to £6,000 - far more generous statistically speaking than anything offered until that point! Still, Gavin declined this one too, and on we went to the fifth round, in which he found 1p, £20,000 and £10. The Banker offered £10,000, which was really a phenomenal act of kindness in the circumstances, the mean sitting just a fraction over £12,600. Gavin saw it that way too, and decided to DEAL at £10,000.

In the proveout, however, luck wasn't particularly kind; a few reds went, but a blue and £50,000 remained, and the offer could've been £23,000. No bother, there was only a fiver in his box, but it was an unfortunate end to what was a brilliantly played game.

18 years since VENTRESS Stuart and Psychic Sarah and19 years since the beginning of the infamous "Sequence-gate" era!!