Kate, who claims to be the words and numbers game’s first ever ‘out’ lesbian contestant, caused ripples that rocked Dictionary Corner by offering up the word ‘poofter’. Now she’s spoken about the experience on Lesbilicious, the online lesbian magazine.

“I saw ‘poofter’ imediately,” she says, “then I saw ‘woofter’. I sat there scratching my head, thinking, ‘What do I do now? Do I player poofter or do I play woofter?”

Read the full interview here.

Dear Great TV Controller in the sky,

Please make Countdown good again. Please make it how it used to be, only not quite how it used to be, because it was never as good as you remember. Please make it so the studio set looks different but yet similar to what it used to be. Please banish all that did not work about it before, only not quite everything so that it does not feel like a different programme. Please make it a different programme all the same. Please send a new woman to do the letters and numbers. Please make her different yet similar to the one before. And above all please send a new host who looks new but does not feel so new that he feels different from the one before and the one before and the one before that. But is different. But also not.

Yours, a viewer.

Dear viewer,

You might have seen those new adverts on the side of buses that say I do not exist. It is just as well that they are right, because what you are asking is impossible. I cannot make the perfect Countdown, because there is no such thing. It has always been a programme that is not the sum of its parts. Parts have always been found wanting as far as Countdown is concerned. Indeed, for a time you just couldn’t get the parts.

So meanwhile why not accept that it will never be the same as it used to be. Wishing won’t make it so, let alone praying. After all, even if they do screw it up – again – it’s hardly the end of the world. No, that would be:

GRADED MOAN

That’s my teatime teaser for today. B-bye now.

And lo it was that Countdown came back from the dead for another time.

And many did predict great things and did go out of their way to fill columns of newsprint and live blogs and online forums with glowing testaments to the wonderment of Jeff Stelling and spoke of how the host of a live multi-hour Saturday afternoon satellite television sportscast would be perfectly suited for a carefully-scripted pre-recorded 50-minute Channel 4 teatime parlour game.

At least, that was the impression.

With gospel-like authority, word had been spread by the C4 publicity machine that Stelling’s appointment as the latest anchor of Countdown had proved an epiphany. Everybody involved with the series, it was intimated, fizzed with the zeal of a new model army of daytime television. Together with the first re-appointment of a words-and-number woman since the programme’s birth, in the shape of Rachel Riley, it would all add up to a jubilant rewatering, or at least a reseeding, of this once fertile patch of the schedule.

Jeff Stelling: did he mention he's interested in football?

Well, Stelling is no saviour. He isn’t that much of a screen presence either. Purely off the evidence in this first edition, he’s capable at keeping things (literally) ticking over. He can hold affable conversations with strangers, in the shape of the contestants and, given the near-total recasting of the Countdown family, the studio as well. He can crack the odd joke.

However he also exudes the demeanour of the over-participatory mature student, uprooted from one very particular environment with its own nods, winks, in-jokes and bluster, to another. And in compensating for what are perceived as drawbacks (lack of familiarity with his peers, an absence of pedigree as quiz show host) he likes to major on what perhaps he believes from experience to be his strengths.

This means gags about football. It means footballing similes and jargon. On one occasion it even means supplying a footballing turn of phrase for a word that had nothing to do with football.

Never having watched Soccer Saturday, Stelling’s stomping ground on Sky Sport, all of this schtick was just downright annoying. Who cares whether the words you’re “more used to are foul, penalty, referee and blind as a bat”? Just persuade viewers you are good at doing this job, not your other one.

Things get a bit hairy on the old sums whiteboard

He didn’t even say hello, choosing to inaugurate his tenure by declaring, in simpering Charles Hawtrey-esque tones: “It’s cold and it’s damp and it’s miserable and the electricity bill and the gas bill and the phone bill have all arrived on the same day and it’s still six months to the summer holiday, but are we downhearted? No we are not, because Countdown is back!”

Maybe, if fortune smiles favourably on this self-professed relaunch, Stelling will calm down and find the right timbre to match the tone of proceedings. The more hours he puts in, hopefully the less he’ll feel moved to choose babble over instruction and hectoring over chat.

He is the only raw point in the programme’s texture. Rachel Riley feels refreshingly free of her predecessor’s penchant for gurning and attention-grabbing. As she selflessly admitted during the show, making a debut on a Champion of Champions edition was never likely to give her much to do in the way of marker-on-whiteboard maths wizardry. Stelling’s superfluous verdict? “You’re looking good so really enjoy it.”

Sachs does three minutes of I'm Not Manuel material

Andrew Sachs was in Dictionary Corner. “He may be from Barcelona,” trilled Stelling, “but he’s with us today.” Sachs’s sole contribution was a smug yet harmless recitation of a 1920s comic monologue, replete with GCSE drama hand gestures. Susie Dent - “an old hen” – sat next to him as usual.

“This is the same Countdown you’ve grown to love over the years,” Stelling cooed by way of reassurance. It’s not. It’s different. It feels more like a programme again and not a pantomime, or a performance of a tired cabaret routine. It feels like it features people who are interested in television again. Whether all of them are interested in us remains to be seen.

In short: a qualified pass. Could do better.

A graded moan, if you like.

Countdown

Countdown returns on Monday, C4, with its all-new presenting team – Jeff Stelling (“Stelling is the name -  six consonants, two vowels”) at the desk, and the very smiley Rachel Riley wrangling the letters and numbers.

We’ll have a full review from our Countdown correspondent Ian Jones, but – briefly – how’s the relaunched show looking?

Well, the answer is – in my opinion anyway – pretty good. Initially Stelling takes a bit of getting used to; he’s arguably too slick, sports a bit of a rictus grin and is overly preoccupied with working in the football references. But he’s keen to assure us: “This is the same Countdown you’ve grown to love over the years”.

And it is. By the time you get to the first numbers game – and you’re reminded of one of the most joyous 30 seconds on telly (that bit where both contestants immediately twig a solution, and then spend the rest of the half-a-minute quietly making it clear they’ve done so) – you’ve forgotten anything’s afoot. Well, aside from the set, which looks like it was based on one of those plastic balls you put in the washing machine… but is rather pleasing nonetheless.

Rachel Riley

Jeff Stelling

Come the 45-minute mark, it’s like it’s always been this way. Rachel hopes her student chums at Oxford are tuning in from the bar, while Jeff doggedly (and with a Whiteley-esque lack of grace) pursues some Fawlty Towers chat with Dictionary Corner guest Andrew Sachs – despite the fact Sachs had earlier gone to great pains to stress he was a versatile actor, with more than just the one consonant (that being “Qué?”) on his CV.

It would seem, for now anyway, Countdown‘s condundrum has been resolved.

Fat chance. “We’re all looking rather sombre this afternoon,” drawled Carol at the top of this anniversary show. *Click*. Thanks but no thanks. Oh, but hang on. Maybe she’s being, well, ironic. Maybe she’s about to lead the studio in a rousing chorus of felicitations? Maybe Des is about to read out a batch of cards, and some celebrities will turn up on film to proffer messages of congratulation?

Yes, and maybe Countdown is still the warm and satisfying afternoon rock cake of the schedules it once was. For this was the birthday show that wasn’t. Not one mention was forthcoming. Not one reference dropped, not a single joke essayed. It was the great unmentionable. And the occasion was all the less for it.

Heavens, even Des Lynam, who struggled continuously to absorb and radiate Countdown‘s once-stout conviviality with its own past, at least had a go. At least he tried to sound like it was a special day. At least he observed that Countdown actually had a history.

The right way to celebrate a teatime TV anniversary

Not this time. This was the most depressingly-staged birthday the show has ever had. A pall hung over proceedings, which it was impossible to separate from recent off-screen events concerning not so much the business of Countdown‘s past, but the nature of its future.

Was this edition recorded, you wondered, before or after Des O’Connor and Carol had decided to quit? And that they had revealed as much to the production team? Or the public?

It was very easy to read into their respective personalities a pointed sense of going through the motions. Of a duty to be discharged. Of eyes fixed firmly on the finishing line off in mid-distance, their gaze never once raised to the horizon or cast down for a moment’s introspection.

This was not comfortable viewing. It seemed Countdown‘s star turns were no longer reconciled to our presence. A bond felt like it had snapped. Even the contestants were addressed coolly. The special guest in Dictionary Corner, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, didn’t smile once for a full 13 minutes.

Reticence was something Countdown shook off in the 1980s. Formality it discarded a decade later. Here both were on display, and unambiguously rampant.

"What have you got for us, CECIL?"

12 months ago it was possible to say the programme was “more alive and distinctive than ever”. There was no spark to this particular affair, however, nor joy for the moment. The fact it was also a birthday compounded things to the extent of turning an excuse into a felony. Each 30-second voyage down the left side of the clock felt twice as long. To echo Clive James, any funeral moving at such a pace would have been dispersed by the police before it got to the graveyard.

It would be heartless not to document the positives. Des and Carol were perfectly capable as host and foil, appearing professional throughout. The primacy of words and numbers were respected. Knowledge was rewarded, mistakes tolerated.

On the evidence of this edition, all the fundamentals of Countdown are still sound. But they said the same about the UK economy, up till about four months ago – coincidentally the same moment both Des and Carol announced they were off. And it’s unfortunate that this most austere of quiz shows is teetering just at the point when the country is once again embracing, admittedly not by choice, a degree of frugalism. Nobody could ever accuse Countdown of promoting greed or avarice. It might still become an emblem of recession Britain.

Yet if it’s heartless to dispute the programme’s worth, it’s worthless disputing the fact it has lost some of its heart. Sulking on your birthday is just not on. Susie Dent discussing etymology is no substitute for a giant cake.

"Watched myself in Countdown. It was terrible."

Maybe Countdown is not, and should never be, a crucible for Dylan Thomas-esque emotional grandstanding. You’re not going to see Des O’Connor raging at the dying of the light, even if he’s only got a few weeks left on his contract. But if this show is still meant to stand for anything, it’s got to be that television can take the mechanics of a parlour game and twirl them into something bewitching enough to dance with an audience’s soul.

Old age should burn and rage at close of day. And if not, as close to 3.30pm as possible.

Various news sources are today reporting that the Soccer Saturday host is in line to take over the job, and while his name seems to have come right out of left-field I have to admit that I can’t think of a better candidate. Jeff has been absent from the screens of terrestrial viewers for some time, but has earned himself a cult following on Sky Sports News’ regular footy fix. Most of the viewers of Countdown probably have no idea of who Stelling is, but his combination of witty banter, repartee with co-presenters and his natural television presence should serve the show very well indeed. But who can pick the numbers and letters now that Carol has gone?

Where once the station was cheeky, inconsistent and unpredictable, Countdown was dour, unchanging and suffocatingly polite. It wasn’t so much accommodated in the schedule as reluctantly tolerated. Then, as the channel sharpened up its act and became more professional, slick and business-like, Countdown‘s profile mutated into that of a slightly shambolic, harmless cult. It was indulged for its whims and begrudged for its following.

Finally, as the century turned and C4 homogenised into a mainstream, mass market entertainment channel competing with, rather than complementing, its rivals, Countdown ended up the jester at the court. It was the survivor, defying all knockers and naysayers and numerous relaunches, overcoming not just the death of its founding host and ambassadorial raconteur, but also the departure of a second, equally-iconic, front man. Now, where everything around it seems bland and never-changing, Countdown – partly by default and partly by design – feels more alive and distinctive than ever.

This, the 25th birthday show, was always going to amount to more of a whirling dervish of whimsy than usual. It was a good job, though, that O’Connor and not Lynam was in charge of revels, or else, going off the evidence of last year, things would have been a Des-aster.

While his predecessor never appeared to care much for the show’s legacy or the devotion of its followers, O’Connor has, since taking over, been far more comfortable playing to the gallery. In other words, letting Carol be the star turn and the viewers’ champion, while settling for the rank of stooge and put-upon breadwinner.

Des was in his element here, ringleading the celebrations and cueing in an unexpectedly non-ironic roll call of celebrity well-wishers. The principal treat at this birthday feast, here were premier league personalities conferring sincere felicitations via This Is Your Life-style video “messages”, united in their well-meaning praise and by a judicious invitation, to which they all acceded, to pick letters and numbers on behalf of the studio contestants.

This made for some dashingly surreal moments, as the likes of no less a regal presence as Lord Richard Attenborough, Lord David Puttnam and Sir Terence of Wogan took turns to pick either consonants or vowels, while Carol gamely pretended to “talk” to them as if everything was happening live, like Noel Edmonds used to do in the celebrity rounds of Telly Addicts.

Speaking of whom, the man himself elbowed in from “the Dream Factory, here in Bristol”, replete with a bit of telephonic nonsense from the Banker. Patrick Moore erupted into shot from within a giant flowery shirt. Alex Ferguson petulantly insisted he “actually does quite well, by the way” when “playing along at home”.

Members of Emmerdale and Coronation Street clowned – as is law whenever soap opera casts do inserts for other programmes – through raucous congratulations. Amir Khan, fulfilling the role of “trendy young celebrity”, pledged his support. Even Gordon Brown looked in from Downing Street, crediting the show for helping to promote numeracy and literacy, for being “really good exercise on my mind”, and also to wish that Carol could have – ho ho – helped him with his “sums” while Chancellor.

All this was done with such grace and good nature that only people with no soul would have failed to be touched. Apart, that is, from the reappearance of Brown, this time being played by Rory Bremner and soaked in all that familiar, tired “fiddle the figures” and “got rid of the old boss” gaggery. Why the man seems forever willing to hire himself out to any occasion going, no matter how undignified and unnecessary, is a conundrum as inscrutable as, well, “SMILEMORE”.

Which nobody in the studio got – it turned out to be the far-from ubiquitous word “SOMMELIER”.

For amidst all the hoopla there was indeed a battle of sorts being played out, but it wasn’t that edifying or consequential, being between two former champions competing for pride and the self-declared intent to see who could offer up the most preposterously lofty and unfamiliar words possible.

“Geraniol”, “manque” and “droseras” were amongst the purposefully arch (and hence unappealing) weapons deployed by the joyless contestants, who at least conformed to tradition by virtue of being on the one hand a “bit of a joker” and on the other a unappealingly brainy teenager. With a permanent frown. “I think I saw a bit of a smile there,” cracked Des half-threateningly, when the child clinched victory.

Everything else was pure embellishment. “I’ve had quite a few requests to wear my birthday suit,” teased Carol. This turned out to be the outfit she wore on the very first edition, a quarter of a century ago. “Tie granddad down,” goofed Des. Julie Andrews sent her best wishes and thanks for helping her “spelling and math (sic)”. And clippage of Richard Whiteley was resurrected from the archive. Rather than all the proverbial business from Wetwang to “wankers”, this turned out to be just one scene of the great man, trying (and failing) to read out a letter without corpsing. Simple, flattering, and perfect.

Countdown is currently sponsored by Digital UK, the government campaign to raise awareness about the forthcoming digital TV switchover. On its present form, and with a fair wind, the show deserves to still be flourishing when the very last analogue signal is turned off. Which, appropriately enough, should be round about 2 November, 2012.

YOU’RE JUST ABOUT TO START SHOOTING COUNTDOWN. ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT IT? 

Yes I am. A challenge is a challenge and this is something really different for me. It’s got a really different flavour to it. It’s not a quiz or a game show, it’s more like a parlour game and it’s very laid back, very relaxed, great fun. I’m excited to be part of a show that’s been running nearly 25 years. I went to do some run-throughs a couple of weeks ago, and it was just so much fun. We never stopped giggling. That’s what I love to do. I haven’t done a day’s work since I came into show business – I’ve done a lot of days’ effort, but not work. It’s too enjoyable to call work. 

HAVE YOU BEEN A FAN OF THE SHOW OVER THE YEARS? 

Oh yeah, I’ve watched it many, many times. I’m not very good with the maths but I’m quite good with the words. But Carol is just extraordinary. I don’t know if she’s got a computer in her head – I watched her do the numbers, quite often in a matter of seconds. 

HAD YOU MET HER BEFORE YOU WENT UP FOR THE RUN-THROUGHS? 

Oh yeah, she’s been a guest on Des O’Connor two or three times, she’s done Des & Mel two or three times. I’ve always found her very relaxed, a lot of fun, not afraid to chip away at herself a little bit. She’s lovely. I’m very fortunate to be working with someone who’s got a great sense of fun. 

ARE YOU CONSCIOUS OF STEPPING INTO THE SHOES OF TWO VERY DISTINGUISHED HOSTS OF COUNTDOWN? 

Obviously I’m aware of it. But I can’t afford to look back too much at what’s gone on before. I very much respect both gentlemen. Des Lynam really knows his television, he’s an absolute pro. I’ve met him two or three times – funnily enough, twice at airports – absolutely charming guy. And Richard was great, I had a lot of time for him. He was very warm, really his warmth was his talent. He had real charm, a sweet gentleman. 

YOU BECAME A FATHER AGAIN AT THE AGE OF 72. WILL YOU BE ENCOURAGING YOUR SON TO TUNE IN TOCOUNTDOWN TO HELP HIM LEARN TO READ? 

God, if he starts rattling off nine-letter words that have been mixed up he’ll run the country! But I think if you start pushing kids too hard it’s not good. The programme is watched by everyone from students through to senior citizens, but I think it might be a bit much for a two-year-old. I’ll kick a ball around the garden with him, but I won’t be throwing nine-letter words at him just yet. 

- A NEW ERA OF COUNTDOWN, WITH DES O’CONNOR AT THE HELM, BEGINS ON 2 JANUARY AT 3:30PM.

Des seems almost too avuncular for the front parlour frolics of Countdown. You get the feeling he’d turn up and do an excellent turn at the top of the programme which would go on… and on… and on and then have to be cut to ribbons in order to fit the slot, the end result leaving the host looking discomfited.

Sure, we know he’ll have a great rapport with Carol and the guests in Dictionary Corner, but would he really have such a great relationship with the contestants? Des excels at jawing with celebrity, not non-entity. Might not his penchant for festive gossip and easy anecdote fall on less receptive ears when unleashed upon ordinary members of the public?

Then there’s the business of handling the actual mechanics of the game. Richard could always be relied upon to get excited upon hearing of the existence of a strange new word, or if LEOTARD turned up amongst the letters for the 78th time. Des Lynam, on the other hand, barely registered a glimmer of interest at such fripperies. He hardly smiled either.

Might Des O’Connor be able to demonstrate a similar kind of sincere engagement with the nuts and bolts of Countdownas Mayor Whiteley, or might he end up embracing the stony-faced insouciance of Lord Lynam? The very fact it’s not easy to tell fails to fill this writer with glowing confidence in the man’s appointment.

Plus there’s his age. It’s a bit like when they replaced the ageing 007 of Sean Connery with the even older and more cumbersome Roger Moore. Or when they replaced the erstwhile frail and ageing Pope John Paul II with an even more frail and ageing Pope Benedict XVI. Des’ arrival isn’t exactly a vote of confidence in Countdown‘s long-term future.

Finally there’s there’s the fact that taking this gig means Des will now be too busy to do anything else, and that means no more easy-going variety-based chat shows, perhaps forever. All for the sake of playing support to Deal or No Deal.

By the look on Des’ face, you’d have thought someone had died. But no, it was just Countdown‘s 24th birthday, and as usual our man was doing his best to grace the occasion with a crisply-executed ill-suited response.

“It’s a very special day,” he mumbled as if delivering a eulogy. “Yes,” immediately boomed Carol, jump-starting proceedings by wrestling proceedings out of Des’ grey hands and into her own forever-affable universe.

“It’s a very special day,” she repeated, before leading the audience in a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday to Us”. Visiting pupils from Otley grammar school were shown enthusiastically joining in. A couple of old women began to sway. The air was thick with the whiff of embarrassed jubilation. And still Des didn’t smile.

In fact he refused to crack a grin throughout the entire programme. At one point he appeared on the verge of letting slip a sly chuckle, only to resolve this dribble of emotion into a cocky snort. His eyes betrayed no sign of enjoyment. His voice rarely rose above that of an apologetic restaurateur. At several points he appeared to be checking an atlas for the quickest route home. He bid us goodbye as if brushing off a money spider that had been stuck to his moustache.

And it was all going so well. From those dark days of the late ’90s, when he single-handedly made enemies of the entire nation by defecting from the BBC to ITV, Des had just reached the point at which everybody had more or less forgiven him – only to go and blow it all again by proclaiming himself too lazy to continue making the journey up to Countdown‘s Yorkshire studios. Now he’s off, presumably to spend more time pottering in a diameter of three or so miles around his sundial, leaving behind him a show that is once more looking for a suitably avuncular, comforting host.

Which would make a change from the present incumbent. In retrospect Des was never going to completely settle into Richard Whiteley’s high-backed purple chair, despite this reviewer’s initial enthusiasm. Time just wasn’t on the man’s side. It actually worked against him, conspiring to illuminate rather than mask his shortcomings. And it was happening day after day after day.

A dose of Des every 24 hours soon proved a far cry from a regular weekly helping. Those dusty turns of phrase and mildewed mannerisms which proved to be devastatingly effective following hard on the heels of frantic football action started to seem singularly jaundiced cloistered within the confines of a parlour game. Suddenly Des and his patter felt very, very old. Worse, so did Countdown.

The one factor above all else which had helped keep the format, ahem, ticking over down the decades – the show’s blatant comprehensibility – became an anachronism. Des wasn’t conferring any dignity or patronage onto Countdown‘s enduring rules and rituals. Instead he was behaving as if he didn’t much care for them. He came to treat them as an irritation rather than representing the whole point of him being there. The show had always been inconsequential, but Des somehow turned this into a bad thing.

It’s hard to see how any of this was intentional. It’s equally difficult to doubt Des’s sincerity in accepting the job in the first place and seeking to make a reasonably decent fist of following in the footsteps of someone like Richard Whiteley.

The problem now is trying to convince us he’s not bailing out because he’s given up. His stated reason of disliking the travelling is simply not worthy of a man of Des’s reputation and grasp of public relations. Sure, he may have harboured such feelings deep down, but you’d never expect somebody like him to come out and say so on the record.

His actions smack of taking the least worst way out and of not wishing to face up to the challenges before him. Now we’ll never know whether Des did have the capacity, in the long term, to fashion the programme in his own image, accept its values, cherish its quirkiness and learn to smile. You’d like to think he could have made it a success. The fact he’s denied us – and himself – that pleasure is pure petulance, bordering on the selfish.

So he’s lost the good faith of the nation all over again. And it’s a pity he had to dress up his exit in such tattered clothing which ill suits both him and the programme he’s leaving behind.

Yet you have to wonder now whether it’s worth pulling the plug for good, especially as whoever takes over would have a bigger mountain to climb than that which faced Des. At least he inherited a show that was still a success. The new presenter will step into a show that is sprawling on the ropes.