Anyway…

Today is 18 years since the airing of Irene’s show - you know, that depressing trainwreck that was obscured by Nick’s famous 1p win the following day…well, ‘day’, didn’t they record three shows a day at that time? So it may well have been the same afternoon!

I don’t know much about Irene or where life took her after Deal or No Deal, but I do know some details of her game - it was obliterated from the first box and never properly recovered…£250,000 went first, swiftly followed by £50,000, then £10,000 to remove what would’ve been a healthy backup, and finally £35,000 and £75,000. Glenn was in generous mood - he offered £1,700.

An all-blue second round nudged the offer up to £2,400 but the £20,000 going in round three was a colossal hit in the circumstances, and £2,000 only was the tariff under consideration at 11-box.

Irene chose to go on, and found the penny, the tenner, and £5,000, the latter quite alright as the business end of the game approached. The £100,000 remained on the board, replete with £15,000 for backup and £3,000 for insurance, and a much-improved offer from the banker surely ensued.
For reasons known only to himself, however, Mr Hugill instead opted to insult Irene.

He said he’d pay her £4,700.

It was well-pitched, of that there could be no doubt - far enough above the insurance figure that it had to be considered seriously - but it certainly didn’t reflect the trajectory the game had taken since that awful start.
Irene went on, probably correct statistically to do so, but soon regretted it. First went the £100,000, then £750, and then of course the £15,000. As Noel would later say in another show - that’s it, it’s over.

£800 was offered and declined; there followed the removal of the two highest amounts left, £3,000 and £500, in quick succession, and lastly with £50 disappearing the ordeal was almost over.

So said Glenn, ‘£100’ - so said Irene, ‘No Deal’, the swap was offered and the swap was accepted, box 17 left the table and box 15 replaced it, and Noel opened that box to reveal five pounds.

To paraphrase Ol’ Blue Eyes, though, the worst was yet to come…

Here we are, the SEVENTEENTH anniversary of young Laura Pearce from Monmouthshire (The first of two young ladies from Monmouth to pull off the feat in fact ) becoming DoND's very first jackpot winner!

I've actually grown more appreciative of Laura's game after seeing the January 2007 games again recently, as I used to think that the derisory £45k offer at 2-box put a slight dampener on things and made Laura's jackpot win feel like "the landmark game that served it's purpose". But watching episodes from around that time made me realize just how happy everyone seemed on the show at the time - Notice how Noel didn't drag out the box opening for 6 eternities like he did with future jackpot winners?

I still recall how truly abysmal the weather was that day. It's a tough competition to win, but the afternoon walk I embarked on somewhere near Portsmouth (family visit) is right at the top of the list for the bleakest, wintry, rain lashed outings of all time. I wish I could remember where exactly it was, we just called it ''the tundra''. Even if we had a camera, we'd have barely been able to use it.

And I also recall a Channel 4 show was premiering that same day, Ugly Betty. We travelled to the south on the Friday and it was being billboarded all across London.

I remember all that detritus, but no real memories of watching her show at all. Had it not been the £250k ''must see!'', I probably wouldn't have watched it at all. There were better things to be doing.

I seem to remember the £45k offer was quite controversial at the time due to being so low, but then along came Alice's Banker's Gamble just over two years later...

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!