Hello, friends.

After witnessing one of the worst weeks in the history of Deal, I figured it was time to make my exit before saying something that might get me arrested. Initially, I had h2005 close down my account for a few days, but thanks to a conversation between him, myself, Simon F. and Archie via Twitter, I realized that there was still one thing left for me to do before calling it a career.

You see, I've been keeping a secret from all of you, and I figured now would be a good time to reveal it. As I hinted to some of you on Twitter, this is something dark that has been relegated to the back of my mind since 2008.

Brace yourselves, because this is not going to be an easy pill to swallow. Here goes.

Many of you often become angry when I insult blue winners, calling them greedy and worse things. The greedy bit is more or less true, but I could've probably done without the insults. But there is a reason why I've reacted like this for such a long time, and it's time to reveal why.

Dateline, sometime in 2008. A then-20-year-old me is looking for news about Deal or No Deal on Google, expecting to find a leak about a big win or something. I find a few news stories, many of which are from other countries, and not in English as well. They're relatively mundane in nature. But then I see one about a highly controversial thing that happened on one of the international versions. Intrigued, I decide to read on.

This was a big mistake. I didn't know it then, but I would later regret having clicked on that link.

The article told the story of a contestant that had been on one of the international versions (I forget which one exactly; this was almost six years ago). He had big hopes and dreams, and had wanted to win money to help his family. This something you'll hear in almost every incarnation of Deal. He played a pretty brave game, and was making a huge push for the jackpot. Nothing could stop him, it seemed.

Declining the final offer, the contestant opened his box, and the jackpot wasn't there. Instead, he left with some very insignificant amount of money, probably 50p or less, if we're comparing it to the UK version. He didn't even stick around to hear the host's words of consolation. He just walked off the set, distraught.

That's not the worst part. You'll often hear stories of contestants wanting to have viewing parties with their friends and family when their show airs. So this person unfortunately had to do that too, as his family was expecting him to win big. But when they saw that he pushed his luck too far, they were furious at him.

Now comes the worst part, and believe me, this is not easy for me to type out, even though this contestant was in no way connected to me personally. After enduring much anger from his family, the young man fell into a deep depression, which was spurred by his family constantly reminding him that he had failed them. Eventually, he could bear the abuse no longer, and he chose to take his own life.

By the time I had finished reading that story, I was in tears. I thought, what if that were to happen on the UK version? It would be devastating. Words cannot describe how terrible that would be.

The show never did recover from that incident, and was cancelled less than a year later. The backlash was too big of a cross for the show to bear, and the the network it was on noticed. Rather than have it continue, they just put it out of its misery, which was probably the best thing they could've done.

Ever since then, whenever I hear about someone's game going off a cliff on this forum, I start to worry that the contestants might do what this person did. And as a result, I've been very anti-blue, and anti-greed as well. It's also made me far more cautious in simulated gameplay. I used to be a huge gambler, but this incident changed that.

Greed, as we all know, is one of the seven deadly sins. It has never brought fortune to anyone, only despair and failure. This week, we saw some of the greediest contestants in the show's history throw away thousands of pounds as if it didn't matter at all to them. They learned firsthand what happens to greedy people - they hit rock bottom.

Jamie Elwood, the most recent player to ride the greed train, went on the show's official Facebook page and defended his decisions against someone who would make our long list of banned members look like harmless kittens. Even I jumped in, offering to give him $1,000 and buy him a drink if he ever came to Canada. He said he'd happily accept the drink, but not the money. But even so, I couldn't help but think of how greedy he had been, and that he had thrown away nearly 19 large just to end up with crap. The person who played two days prior was ridiculously stupid, and deserves no one's sympathy. Even someone with a lobotomy would've dealt at 35 grand.

So this, my friends, is why I hate blue wins. The last thing I want is for someone to take their own life because they failed on a game show. At the end of the day, Deal or No Deal is a simple game show that has rewarded many people over the years. My only wish is for people to play the game and do well. Obviously, that can't happen to everyone, due to different personalities and such, but wouldn't it be great if it did?

If this recount left you with a bad taste in your mouth, I offer my sincerest apologies. But I feel that after keeping this secret bottled up for nearly six years, I had to finally get it off of my chest. It's not the most conventional way to go out, but then again, I'm not famous for using the conventional approach, especially around here.

Thank you all for your friendship, tolerance, humour and lessons. Believe it or not, I've actually learned some life lessons from some of you, and I'm forever grateful for that.

To h2005: Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your forum. I know I've been maddening to deal with at times, but you showed a level of tolerance that I didn't think existed. You also got to live out every Deal fan's dream and play the game yourself. Your game is my favourite of all time, and I'm not just saying that because you run the show around here. It was the most hilarious bit of television I've ever watched. Thank you for that. You are a gentleman and a star. Also, you bear a striking resemblance to my brother Matthew, and hockey player Sidney Crosby.

To Archie: If you don't become a contestant on Deal someday, it will be a crime against humanity. But if you do get on, please play responsibly, and consider each offer carefully before dismissing them as "bad" or "crap." If you adopt that mentality, you'll do just fine, and probably depart with a nice chunk of change, just like our root admin did. Also, funky shirts FTW. Yours can out-funkify those worn by Noel any day. See? I had to make up a word to get my point across. Please don't tell my editor.

And now, I'll leave you with this quote from Douglas Adams, which comes from his book Mostly Harmless. It's one of my all-time favourite quotes.

Anything that happens, happens.

Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.

Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.

It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though.

My best,
-Mark E. "Mad Mark / Hawker5ive" David

(P.S., for those wondering, the username Hawker5ive is derived from the Toronto Transit Commission's now-retired Hawker Siddeley H5 subway cars. I enjoyed these cars, so my username served as a little tribute to them.)

And by "career" you of course mean your posting on this forum for March 2014 and this month alone.

Er, what?

I think you've, er, missed Mark's point there, Roddler...by, ah, quite, er, quite a long way...

Isn't it obvious, Dan? He only joined the forum to needle away at me.

I'm still the more useless of the two, though. At least his commentary has been decent, at best, lately. Mine is forgettable and unnecessary. Just assume that if I continued to post, you'd hear the usual bits about reckless greed, stupidity, and so on.

Hi Mark/Hawker5ive, a very interesting post I thought,but for the one reply up to now, that is why I do not get too involved with writing too much,as there are always people who are gonna shoot you down.
I have also been banned off the 'other' site and that is when you find out who really likes you.I do hope that the story never happens in this country to DOND,but remember a few years ago what happened in a sat night live time show? and what happened to that show.Anyway all the best if you eventually go(if?) Mark as I have enjoyed a lot of your topics & posts you have put on here.As the old saying goes 'You can please some of the people...blah blah...

Sorry to bring up an old thread after nearly 7 years but I don't think I read this at the time as I had "left"!

Mark - if you're still around then that does explain a lot. Seeing someone win a blue having turned down large amounts would trigger something in you which brought back horrible memories etc so I completely understand now.

(Though I do recognise there were some circumstances where you would still give the contestant the treatment if they'd dealt and just so happened to have undersold a large value, or their games were just doomed from the start and they never got any offers to seriously go at, and could only avoided a blue win if they'd taken a grand or two by dealing the first or second offer or similar - which actually never happened here. Though I guess that was you just trying to cause a reaction which I no doubt added fuel to your fire)

(Yes I'm bored during lockdown and reading old threads - I'm actually amazed all this is till here over 4 years after it finished!)

He was a brilliant troll, genuinely laugh out loud at times. It was archetypal ''criticise the player absolutely regardless'', I mean I use the same approach when it comes to football.

I think this site is still online cos it's pretty damn cheap to maintain. How much bandwidth does a 2006 formatted website take up? (And much of the aspects here predate that considerably, those emoticons are absolute AOL/Netscape vintage)

Well, that's it psycho really - what we have here is living history, and perhaps it's time we looked at it from that angle. Where can you go on the internet that is still exactly as it was fourteen years ago? Not quite fifteen as we had it in 'subsilver' blue and grey back then, and to be honest I never have acquainted myself well with the purple...I think it was called subsilver anyway, something like that.

The best one Mark did was "It's only game. Why you heff to be mad?". Even though I was only just looking at game reviews anonymously when I saw it, I absolutely HOWLED at it. That was genius.

Now looking back, I can't imagine what possessed me to get so protective over the contestants. It's not like (apart from Glen who played in April 2010 - who nobody at all apart from me remembers) I have met any of them, and it's not as though we saw many of them on here afterwards either after they'd played (apart from H I guess lol).

And it's not like it was just him who got my goat either - just before that it was the other Mark if anyone undersold their box even when they'd won huge amounts like £70k and RMF was basically tell anyone who naysayed that they couldn't (grrr!), Norwichdonder (I think) who seemingly wanted every contestant to drop down dead, and even the Wakeyteers before that. Yep I wished I'd chilled more. Still, can't go back.

But I was watching Pointless earlier and couldn't believe the stupidity of the father/son pairing who were playing for the jackpot of nearly 8 grand - they picked a subject neither of them knew crap all about and it was train crash TV - and was shouting at the TV calling them idiots. So there's a bit of it in me after all!

You never lose it!

Ok, I said I'd never post on here again and that I was only checking up occasionally for nostalgic reasons and the very faint chance of any interesting new posts, but seeing james1978 posting here again has motivated me to come back for at least for a post or two

In lieu of the posts my namesake has made in this thread over the last few days, I think the worst example of certain members bickering on here (apart from the obvious fighting words between the wakey trio and everyone else trying to hold their tongue to avoid ending up worse than them) would be £75k Belinda's game from 2012 - one of the best games that year. Yet that game just went over everyone's head on here due to the thread on her game turning into 4 pages of people arcing up at each other, which was started by a certain brave-bot and MySpace-era emoji generator. All that masochistic drama over a box underselling which amounted to denying a spanking and nothing more, oh the nostalgia

This site has remained completely unchanged since at least 2007 and is still active 4 years after DoND aired it's final episode, even with the site's activity since then being unsurprisingly sporadic (apart from certain algorithms of course....).

It's incredible how the forum continues to survive - it's a relic from the days where MySpace was the social media king, Facebook and YouTube were just entering their post-umbilical stages, and every kid in high school was either going through their emo phase, getting frosted highlights in their hair to gain "jock cred", or hated dance music with a passion unless they were one of those kids who listened to Cascada as an alternative to rap or emo, never mind the fact independent forums these days are being left to gather dust in favour of the social media giants. Heck, this format probably dates back as far as the late dial-up/beeper era when so-called "boomers" perhaps still lived in awe and fear of the humble creation that was the internet

After your reminder about it James, I just had to go and re-visit Belinda's game thread. It's actually not as bad as what I remember from the time though maybe H removed some posts a few hours after the game!!

(If she'd won £75k from the box after somehow - unlikely but possible - no-dealing £100k then I'm sure the reaction would have been far different even though the result was effectively the same. £75k Daniel ALMOST did just that!)

It has reminded me though of getting lectured who I could and couldn't vote for in show of the month by someone in case it upset someone else (I remember Niko!!) and being told I couldn't deal on "What would you have done today" in certain situations - in 2021 that would wind me up far more than any team sarcasm would!

2012 was pretty fruitful for this forum, wasn't it? I hadn't quite realised just how much discussion there was, whether it was good or bad. The place still had its pulse and there were a few old cranks still turning up every day.

Compare it to the ''see out its contract'' Box 23-era and the difference is chalk and cheese, nothing happened at all. 2012, honestly, take me there.

2012 was the year I joined (it'll be 9 years on April 23!!). It certainly an interesting time to join on here compared to the last 2 years of the show where it was simply going through the robotic motions of "commentary - good/bad answer for 23 - hopefully he/she won't have too many regrets" each day and that was the entire discussion for the day...

Was never a fan of the show becoming an hour long, but it did help spark some interesting interesting discussion for at least the first couple of years of that era (even if it wasn't all positive discussions) since the forum was becoming noticeably quieter during 2010 - which was down to a mixture of regulars from the early days losing interest in the show and lengthy spells of poor-mediocre games failing to fill us with much enthusiasm (apart from maybe the regular-ish questionable gimmick which may have whipped up a brief tizzy on here)

Of course one character from around 2012 who stood out on here was a certain young fella whose profile was adorned with strange purple ponies

March 2012 Show Of The Month polls: YOU WILL NOT FOR NIKO!!! (Then follows about 700 emojis)

(Honestly I'm looking at names of contestants from that period, and most of them I'm thinking "Who??" - Niko was actually one of the few games I watched then as I was off work that Friday he played and thought he was hilarious).

Wot, there was even a £750 spanking a couple of weeks after that?? Didn't think that was humanly possible!

And I know it was 2013 rather than 2012 but Iris is one of the few I remember from then. The thread was all like "How dare she get a spanking from that deal. HOW DARE SHE"!