*cough* *cough* Location: Ipswich *cough* *cough*

I remember Matty being a very popular contestant and having a pretty decent run on the wings (25 games was it?). I think that was a big part of why his game left behind such a negative impact on the other contestants (2008 was a bad time for popular contestants having trainwreck games which would greatly affect the others on the wings waiting to play, and it would result in many weeks of cautious dealing and players being emotional wrecks. And every time it looked like they were turning a corner, the same thing would happen again. It didn't take until £75k Keran's game in November (some 8 months later) to finally break the frustrating cycle and trigger a much-needed revival era going into 2009

Absolutely true but be honest, 10-15 minutes into that game you wouldn't have put any money on the fact that she'd have comeback from a 9-2 situation at 11 box and destroyed the left side of the board in the next 9 boxes and ultimately produce certainly in my opinion, the biggest turnaround ever in DOND history by winning £75k? I certainly wouldn't have! I remember thinking at 11 box: "OMG, this is turning into Nicky Tucker II..."

Keran was, in some ways, the complete opposite of Matty, in that she did next to nothing on the wings; if she hadn't had such an explosive game, she'd have probably been forgotten about very quickly. Same goes for quite a lot of the contestants we all remember to this day, such as Corinne.

Since today is the anniversary date, can anyone remember back in 2007/2008 when H used to keep saying that Nigel's game from March 23rd, 2007 was his #1 worst game ever?

Lo and behold, guess who would end up playing their game on the anniversary date of their favourite game 2 years later? Irony is great isn't it

I think it was mainly because Noel's Wakey Winter attitude along with the blue chants were at their peak at the time.

Nigel did seem to be the king of the blue chants IIRC. I clearly remember his voice being heard over all the others when the chanting was "penny, penny" in Chantelle's game when she was left with 75k/35k/1p and "3,3, 3" in Doug's game when he was left with 100k/50k/3k.

Wasn't there "Red, Red, Red" in Ian's game too?

More of a personal feeling about DoND, but I find a lot of games from 2008/2009 a lot easier to watch back on now, as (being an avid UK DoND fan from abroad) i had to rely on the now-defunct ilovedond.co.uk website to obtain footage of the games, and back then - and this was before i became totally loyal to the forum - my viewing experiences and opinions about the games were always being tarnished somewhat by the crowd who pretty much used the site as a 24 hour picketing ground for their constant "no gimmicks" tirades like they had nothing better to do. Sure i agreed with some of things they said, but it got to the point where they were just saying negative things about the show and the contestants, and were also incredibly opinionated, pretty much lecturing people who expressed differing view points into agreeing with them

I remember these guys basically cried sacrilege over any sort of gimmick or twist that was used - e.g. banker's gamble, themed weeks, players being told what their next offer might be etc. (they even referred to these as "cardinal sins"! )

I'm currently watching £50 Matt's game from July 2009 on YouTube, and this was one of those games were a young male contestant played, took reasonable gambles, and once the last red was taken out, he looked absolutely mortified and the atmosphere was totally dead (forget the ludicrous banker handout at the end). I remember Matt was one of the contestants being (along with a couple of other male players who won blue amounts and took it badly, i.e. 1p Matty and £1 Martin - The latter is the most sympathetic one obviously) targeted by the idiots who posted on that site around 2009, and seemed to take pleasure in seeing people win blues and take it badly

Speaking of the "dramatic and emotional" trainwreck games of the 45-minute show era like £1 Martin, 1p Matty, 1p Trevor etc. something i've noticed about these games is that the cameraman would always "fixate" on certain contestants on the wings during the last 10-15 minutes of the game (i.e. from the second break onwards), and make it feel like other contestant's that were there didn't exist due to the lack of camera exposure

Like during the last part of Martin's game for example, the cameraman kept focusing on contestants such as Kate, Laura and Dan, and if they didn't show anyone opening their box during the last part of the game (or someone standing beside a box opener), it felt like they were never there. I remember players like Nicholas, Aurora, Hassan, Bessie and Sid not getting any camera exposure at all during the last part of the game, thus making it easy to forget they were there. Likewise in Trevor's game, where it felt like players such as David, Flash, Mike, Alison and Patrick that were there didn't exist during the last part of the game due to the lack of camera exposure.

What i also found interesting about Martin's game was how they hardly showed any reactions on the wings during Martin's emotional meltdown after the big box reveal (apart from Kate looking quite upset as she opened the final box and Dan with his head in his hands)!

Regarding my earlier post regarding Monica from July 2006, I've finally been able to actually see her game and........it was actually worse than I thought it would be!

She seemed like a right cold and moody piece of work, and I legitimately laughed when the £250k was revealed in the fifth round as Monica angrily stamped her feet! I honestly thought Janelle was nicer!!