There are some contestants who are in excess of 30 DOND shows before they come to the pound table. Lucy was there for 50 shows. Other contestants are only involved in a few shows before they come to the table. So the question is should there be a limit for the number of shows a contestant can appear in? Another question would be whether contestants should appear in a minimum amount of shows before they can go to the crazy chair.

I dont reckon there should be a limit, although I do think that 50 shows is probably a limit that will never be reached again!

No.

If the limit was, say 30 shows and one player was on their 30th show then you would know they were playing the next day and it would spoil it a bit.

I'm unsure as to what criteria Endemol use when they decide how many shows someone will do, but I'm fairly sure that they have a minimum number of shows figure, which would appear to be about 15... I think those who have played fewer than 15 shows have had work commitments (Garvan's 9 shows in January 2006 springs to mind).

I'm not really sure why some contestants stay longer than others - there was a thread about this a while back - is it because Endemol know that some will be more popular than others and so they make the popular ones long runners? Or is it just that the long runners have more time on their hands and so can spend more time in Bristol filming DOND? Bearing in mind that, according to the Guardian newspaper article back in October by Jon Ronson, the production team do get to hear about everything that goes on in the hotel... so maybe what goes on in there has an influence?

I don't think there should be a minimum or a maximum number of shows, as at the moment, there are very few players who do a way-below-average or way-above-average number of shows.

Yes, that's a very good point - it would also mean that if the minimum was 15 and the maximum was 30, for example, we would never get any surprise early players.

Nah, I like it when it's really unpredictable...the only thing that annoys me is when cool people play early and people I'm not bothered about stay for ages. (Still, seeing as my all-time favourite is the joint second longest-runner, I suppose I can't really complain...) I doubt anyone will beat Lucy's 50 for a long time, though.

No I think it should stay random. How they choose I don't know but it adds a bit of a surprise when they do it random. Though sometimes know when someone's due as they've been there a long time.

I wonder if we'll be seeing more early runners this year?