I remember the quote from The Banker at 5 box that summed it up "After the high wire came a clown"

Today is the 10 year anniversary of the beginning of the end of Deal or No Deal.

Iris played 10 years ago today, and got an £11,500 2nd offer on a decent board, which she quickly wanted to take. The Banker caught on to this, though, and made an unprecedented move of reducing the offer to £4,000. Iris no dealt, proceeded to have a great round, and then quickly dealt her £10,000 3rd offer, £1,500 LESS than her original 2nd offer despite having a great round afterward and a great board!

She then destroyed the game afterwards against all odds, having an all round after her deal and then finding the 250k before 2 box, technically "spanking" the Banker as she got out at the highest offer officially available in the game.

That game started an unprecedented run of terrible offers from the Banker and early uber-cautious deals from the players that lasted throughout the rest of 2013, sending the show in a downward spiral which they felt could only be fixed by introducing Box 23. That somewhat worked short term but over time the decline continued and the once great entertainment drama Deal was eventually was cancelled.

I'd be sceptical as to how much influence one game, or even a trend of cautious players in an era when absolutely everybody had to be cautious financially-speaking, had on the eventual fate of Deal or No Deal. I think it was a natural progression, personally, which was delayed for as long as humanely possible through this innovation and that, but that progression arguably had begun long before 2013.

The new show I feel will either have a far shorter life than the original, because it's not a new concept, or it'll become our equivalent of Jeopardy! and take on an entirely new meaning as a national institution. The former is more likely...

IMO, DoND had several peaks and valleys during the first half of run (particularly during the 2008-2010 period), but I really think that the beginning of the hour-long shows era (i.e. the start of 2011) was where the decline truly began and never truly recovered.

I don't think it was any coincidence that the shows becoming an hour long also saw a sudden balloon in cautious deals, which, just a year earlier, people would think were impossible!!

17 years ago today, Janelle was chosen after 12 shows to play, and what followed was one of the strangest atmospheres in the history of the show, with a lack of chemistry between Noel, Janelle and the other contestants, and Janelle not saying much and coming across as quite moody at times throughout the show (having seen finally seen her game in the flesh, I honestly didn't find Janelle as loathsome or unlikeable as I thought I would, I honestly just found her more odd than anything else)!

In fact, this was THE game that brought about the idea that someone playing early meant that the others didn't like them, though this wasn't always the case, as some legends from the early days played after a handful of shows such as Dazzling Daz, Francesca and Cocky Bill......Hell, just a week before Janelle, Shirley played after a handful of shows and seemed well-liked by everyone

The comment from Niquiyah where she says "Janelle's difficult to work out. She knows what she wants she'll get it in the end." may have been a dig at her...

10 years ago today, A certain 18 year old lad called Paddy Roberts from Wigan finally did what many on this forum thought was never gonna happen, he became the first male to win £250,000 and in the process, finally stop Noel waffling on about "When is it finally going to happen?!" And if you just so happen to be reading this Paddy, massive massive congrats again lad! Hope you spent the money wisely or indeed if you still have any of it left!

16 years ago was £35k Rossano's game, the season 3 opener! The beginning of a season that started great, but things would start to dramatically change from about the halfway point of the season. By the end of the season a year later, things would be looking seriously bleak and DoND would be like a completely different show to what it was like in its first 2 years!

I remember it well - I began that season as an avid DoND aficionado, but eight or nine months later, I couldn't have told you who any of the contestants were. So I joined the outgoing tide and left the Dream Factory in the past, never to return.

On the subject pf Paddy, maybe just maybe that was the death knell for the show, as a male quarter-millionaire was the best big remaining milestone to achieve (apart from maybe a first-round deal which wasn't realistically ever going to happen). Might have been that which triggered Box 23 coming into play (so there was the tiniest remote possibility of a half-millionaire)!

I think there were really only 2 big "milestone" events after Paddy - £170k Pat beating Jennifer as the highest deal of all time, and £5k Jean taking out the power 5 in the first 5 boxes!

Maybe not a *major* milestone but there was also someone who removed 8 reds from the beginning of the episode, the inverse of the perennially famous episode from 2006 (Matt). They even managed to take another red out at the start of the 3rd round, making it nine in a row.

This would been in the last year or two before the show ended and as such it's entirely forgotten. Would have been King Tier (in)famous if it'd happened in 2006/7.

Today is 15 years since the first game of Season 4 opener played by Brian. The show was at a real low point at this time, and the early weeks of the fourth season was perhaps the "darkest before dawn" stage of the 2008 "unlucky era", as the first 3 weeks of S4 were absolutely riddled with blue wins (most of which were unavoidable due to banker stinginess - not to mention the banker constantly trying to cover his tracks with RIDICULOUS post-game handouts ), and the only a significant-ish win during this run was a third offer deal that the player was absolutely castigated for! In fact, Brian's game may be in my top 5 worst games of all time. Seeing it again on YouTube more recently made me realise how bad it was - it featured a full checklist of the forum's "2008 annoyances", and then some!:


- Pointless, cringe-inducing gimmick to re-introduce the contestants back from the summer break (the "Rocky" theme)
- Contestant with multiple sob-stories and a modest target for sentimental reasons
- Low win to kick off the new season
- Unhappy-looking group of contestants, with hardly any characters on the wings, and everyone being reduced to tears when the game collapsed
- A stupid handout at the end, which rendered the whole game pointless
- Plus a lot of people weren't too keen on Brian either. He didn't exactly do anything to fill me with laughter either, though the editing team may have been to blame for this, according to comments on here from some of Brian's fellow contestants at the time

I do remember said Brian being on Pointless and he was a much happier character on there so maybe the editing department has to take some blame. The DonD producers must have thought they'd struck gold with the sob stories but not to us on here!

Pointless didn't start for exactly 52 weeks after that so you might be confusing it with another show

15 years ago today, one of the biggest IDIOTS in the history of the show played, with some of the WORST offers in the history of the show, one of the WORST deals ever, one of the WORST rejections of the banker's gamble in the history of the show, and one of the most desperate and pathetic "waaaah I was bullied in school and got my head cracked open" sob-stories in the history of the show

He's living a better life than you, evidently.

Same would apply to most of you lot tbh.

Really hope the revival doesn't bring back some of the absolute pricks that were active in more recent years of the show.

I've learned there'll always be online abuse for anything whatever channel you go on, so if it doesn't happen here it's bound to on Facebook or Digital Spy.

I wouldn't go on a game show to share the gruesome details about my schoolyard trauma, let alone just do it to elicit viewer rubbernecking instead having a compelling reason for wanting to win big