So bad it was funny, and the Santa at least made for two more amusingly low offers. Plus, the theming was used for a bonus prize, and an extra comic moment. If you must have a trainwreck, that's as good as it gets.

What rotten luck after yesterday's squander, I see the 2008 era kicking in once again...

If everyone gave advice that they should deal for low amounts in case they hit a 1 in 56 scenario, we'd never have any big winners.

Didn't get to watch today but it sounds like another game that started badly (had a few of those recently haven't we?) but this one didn't manage to pick up again. Still, at least he didn't end up on the barge, and £100 seems a good result baring in mind a lot of those offers!

Didn't Andy win a holiday on Christmas Day as well?

Just watched the game again. The dance at the end was edited (as was the banker maintaining the pretence that he wasn't going to give Andy the holiday). Possibly the 2nd offer was the only one that was worth considering but no-one would have taken it, especially not with the Santa/Scrooge twist.

Just terribly unlucky - shame my namesake didn't have any luck with my favourite number 1. It sounds bad to say it, but it was quite comically awful at the end with an offer after every box. I had no doubt the banker would eventually donate the holiday.

His dance unedited was brilliant - during the warm-up before boxing day, they played it and all the lights went multicoloured! It was hilarious!

I genuinely have no idea about the holiday tomorrow, but my guess is Rhodes.

It always seem that when it's someone I like and they seem to need, rather than want money, they always end up with a blue, shame.

But I thought he picked the wrong boxes in that totally destructive 5th round - he said he wanted to leave everything with a 2 in it, but Julie's box with the £75k was 12, then the others he picked in that round were 20 and 21. Surely he would have left two of those until after 5-box, then he could got a much better offer?

I think by then his head was all over the place. Noel made a BIG thing of if he was going to hold his nerve or not, most edited out well into the break. He said after his game he didn't know what he was doing by then

It must have been a bit of a shock for Andy to be playing so early - we haven't had someone do that short a run for some time. Seems strange as he was clearly very popular, so I'd have thought he'd be there longer.

I too noticed that he picked some of the numbers with '2' in while he left 3 and 6 out - but after such consistent bad luck, I'm not surprised his head was all over the place.

Who said opening boxes was easy seriously though, would ex players say that the whole situation makes you almost punch drunk especially if you do badly and to compound it Noel is spouting all the facts and saying 'mustn't reveal this red' or 'what a shocker'. The gasp of the audience when he revealed the 75k said it all.

Why such a big fuss about him "holding his nerve"? Did they think he'd deal before the twist then? Do you think he got talked out of doing just that, Jules?

Yes, I didn't like it when he said that either, seemed to be very pro towards going on to the twist stage. Then again, I'm not really surprised given he talked Jaron out of dealing at the 2nd offer of £10,000 at Halloween (for an OPW as it turned out!). Andy was probably going on anyway today but that's not the point, players should be left to their own decisions. Ok, rant over.

That was a relentlessly unlucky game. Thank god for the Banker's Random Acts of Kindness (And God Bless Maz for speaking up when she did) One of those games where you kept thinking it had to turn around, but somehow it never did.
And of course the 5 box twist just made the ending even more painful.

As far as I can remember, I don't think Andy was ever close to dealing. Like Betty's game yesterday, it was just a case of keeping the £75k in play until at least 5-box. Sadly, the £75k wasn't on the table and he hit it straight away.

£4k was a poor offer anyway for the board.

Igor did and went on to deal at 2p.

Did you mean 1p and 50p, though? That happened with a certain other Matty...

Anyway, what a shame we had to have a game like this for the last ever 45-minute episode...

(Not counting the inevitable forced feel-good ending, of course... )

Nauseating. Andy's woeful luck hopefully won't be rewarded with £1,500.

Roll on 2011 and the one hour long trainwreck games.

I think it was obvious how much Andy could do with the money and how bad his board was. Once i had said hold your nerve Noel jumped on that and rolled with it a lot more than shown. What was said to Andy during the break though i do not know.

@ dougal18 while Scotts actions may have not been to your liking it was a geunine offer.

Normally I'd be on the side of not giving away free holidays just because it was a bad game but it felt right at the time.

And may god help us if we go back into endless cycle...again