I think a few of us are familiar with the phenomenon of Youtube 'iceberg' videos, but if not allow me to... copy and paste an explanation cos it ain't gonna be me.

''The Iceberg is a meme format where you take a videogame (or anything, really but in this case, a game) and break it up into categories, where each section gets more complex and obscure as you go down. It's not related to literature.

The tip of the iceberg is surface level knowledge. Things you probably know if you've casually played the game. The idea is, in reality, the tip of the iceberg is not the whole structure. More of it is beneath the surface.

Whereas the bottom level, where the image is so dark it's just black, is full of obscure facts, fan theories, things about the creators and not necessarily the game, etc. Things you'd only know if you went looking for everything there was to know about a game.

And then the middle sections obviously fall somewhere between these two.''

Basically that^^... but for the UK version of Deal or No Deal. The top layer is the tip of the iceberg, it's facts, trivia and elements that pretty much anyone who's watched a few episode will know.

Then it gets a bit more niche as we dip beneath the surface, stuff that us fans will all know well but maybe not the casual viewer who dipped in and out of the show fifteen years ago. Which is why our own H is referred to as ''forum admin''.

Then beneath the depths into the deep and dark unknown, we get the conspiracy theories, very obscure trivia even for the superfans and downright... grim... stuff.

This is my hastily scribbled and very incomplete example so far.

For the last 3-and-a-bit years, whenever anyone mentions "Tiers", all I can think about is "One pub can open but another just over the county border has to close" or "Andy Burnham wants to kill Boris" or "does a scotch egg constitute a substantial meal?"

(And ACB, Dr Hindsight or anyone else outside the UK won't have the foggiest what I'm on about)

Looking at some of the early seasons games that have recently (by "recently", I mean 2016-onwards), there were quite a few sarcastic remarks and backhanded compliments from Noel (Such as Noel poking fun at Maddie for looking tired and miserable, and throwing the young man out in Sandra's game) that got quite a frosty reception from recent commenters.

I'm also sure that other moments, such as the Hitler jokes in 2008 Sandie's game, the jokes about £42k Susan's past marriages (given her background), 2009 Vera's remarks about the banker being gay, and well, pretty much anything that could retroactively be related to COVID in 2020, wouldn't be very well-recieved in today's times

I can seem to remember that in the pre-Orry days of the show, gay contestants were forced to cover up their sexualities on the show, and if they had their partners with them, they were their "best mates", or "partners in crime" or whatever. Certainly wouldn't be looked at the same way now.


In my opinion, the biggest "sequencegate" moment was 1p Trevor, where Noel really seemed to try and pressure Trevor into taking the £99 offer at 2-box and his cadence "I'm not gonna drag this out......we know exactly the scale.......it's 1p" when he unceremoniously flipped the lid on the "Swan pee" box.

There's a lot of weirdness in 'Worzel Gummidge hat' Hannah's game, the Banker outright admitting he was 'zooming in' to certain areas on his TV monitor.

The episode from 2007 that featured ''£money offer and a kiss from a production crew member'' to a man who had been single for a long time felt weird at the time, and it wasn't actually included in the Amazon uploads when months worth of consecutive episodes either side of it were.

Obviously I don't want the 'iceberg' to just be the deep murky underbelly, but naturally that's what will interest us most.

I remember the lad being thrown out - I thought at the time it was a joke, but evidently not. As you point out in your third paragraph there, people were allowed to get away with anything in those days. Lest we forget, this was a time in which S*vile was still strolling the corridors of his local infirmary, unchallenged, unhindered, free as a bird. It was a time when most people probably felt sympathy for Michael Barrymore because the chap who ended up in his swimming pool brought it on himself - he was gay, after all, and wasn't that kind of unbridled debauchery just what gay people did? This is how backward-thinking our society was, only seventeen years ago. It was a time when the BNP were approaching the height of their popularity, for goodness' sake. Bernard Manning was still a famous comedian, Jim Davidson was appearing in a prime-time Channel 4 programme...it goes on, and on, and on.

I actually think Trevor's show, particularly at the end, is one of the rawest moments I've ever witnessed. Who was it, Marilyn, who opened the last box? Shaking with nerves. Everybody on edge. Did Noel know what was in that box? Even if he did, he'd have forgotten it by that time, with the adrenalin surging. Everybody knew: if this is 1p or £250, that bloke on the end of the phone is going to say "£99,900" and an old man's dream will be fulfilled. If this is 1p or £250.

Who was the holiday win that was never taken? Vaguely remember it being offered/dealt…

I also definitely remember it but forget who it was! Technically the first NOTHING win...

I've said before that the way the show evolved over time was fascinating to watch, but I'd mostly thought about that from the perspective of the financial/gameplay side of things, and forgot how much of the casual cruelty of mid-2000s TV was present in other aspects of the show as well! I recall Noel said in one interview prior to the show starting "I think reality TV and cruelty TV are over now," before going to preside over a show that certainly didn't look like the end of cruelty TV...!

Is that Tom from Sep 2007 who dealt for the holiday but didn't get it? First male to play again after the 2 weeks of all females in the 2nd half of that stupid Battle of the Sexes rubbish?

Nope, it was Brenda who dealt at 3 nights in New York on a 4 blues/35k board. That offer was valued at £2,090 too according to the Battle of the Sexes average winnings, I'd definitely rather deal at 2k flat and arrange my own trip to New York with spending money left over if I choose to go the basic economy and 3 star hotel route, but that's the username in me.

Yeah, found it on here, apparently she was ill and in hospital and couldn’t go. Presumably neither she nor Endemol had insurance, no idea if there was any follow-up…

How on earth did I completely forget Brenda??? It was in the prime 2 years of the show when I watched absolutely religiously!

Some more stuff that could make the lower layers (I think they're called "layers" rather than "tiers" which will always remind me of Covid no matter what now) is Yvonne who got kicked off the show for failing to disclose other winnings and the 2 contestants in the current series who disappeared without playing. I find this sort of thing quite intriguing, but to me Ryan and Danny in 2013 remains the biggest curio.

Who disappeared in the current series?

I found that a bit weird at the time, and I was your typical 12 year old edgelord. I guess we're now realising that 2006 was basically the 90's but with DVDs and cameras in phones.

I used to watch Fadil's (2006) show on tape constantly (first game I randomly taped and it happened to be an instant classic - back when winning 1p was rare and notorious) and at one point Noel 'jokingly' puts a question to a male winger ''is there a special man in your life?'' and it brings the house down. Everyone in raptures. That was all the 'joke' was.

Don't think Yvonne was cast-iron confirmed (I think?) whereas we had testimony about CJ from several players on here, and Ryan was more than happy to take to Twitter and admit everything himself.

Caroline Banana was the player who failed to declare her winnings and got done for fraud, right?

Her and Andy, yes. Andy always sticks in my mind because he removed the final red in Mark's 2012 game to leave him with the revolting 9 blues:0 reds board.

Karl who won £20,000 in 2009, got arrested a few years later for drugs.

£35k Andy, got sent to prison for 13 months for not declaring the cash, as he was heavily in debt at the time

Zoe and Johnny, and though I only tend to be able to watch the ends of games, there was seemingly no introduction to their replacements whereas there was to the player who actually had replaced the previous day's player like Paula today who replaced Rochelle.

Stephen briefly referred to "newbies", and Jane (I think?) mentioned Zoe going home, but apart from that no mention was made about the disappearing players and the extra newbies. Yesterday is surely the first time where there were as many as three newbies (apart from the first game of each era of course).

(Deleted my original post as I hadn't spotted your reply!)