Once again the 15 minute introductions are really entertaining. Unfortunately after that the games start.

But of course many will like that as well.

Just been to another recording.

It was the usual (Jimmy, Jon, Sean, Joe, Rachel & Susie_

Had Rob Beckett & Josie Long on the teams and Vic Reeves back in Dictionary Corner...It was fun

I suspected they were running out of steam with the concept in the last run, but I guess the ratings have been good for show so far. I enjoy it immensely, so I'm delighted to hear they're doing more.

I agree. It seemed to get a bit stale. It was full of gimmicks to pad it out. Mascots, songs etc.
It takes about 20 minutes to get to the actual game.

You might be interested to know a filming for the program consists of them recording almost an hour's worth of material for the section between the opening titles and the first ad break. Jimmy does around 10 jokes when he comes on to the set, so they choose the few that go down best to keep in.

The total recording time for the program is around 1 hour 50. Obviously there's not a lot of scope for editing the 30 seconds when they are actually playing word and numbers games so those sections pretty much remain unedited.

Regarding Joe Wilkinson - the warm-up guy at the recording did a mock auction for the sale of Joe Wilkinson, the winning bid looked to be £0.20 but then one girl shouted out £1,000 - so he's got a fan!

There's a show on Dave tonight called 24 Hours to Go Broke.
This episode is with Rachel Riley and Joe Wilkinson if anyone wants to see how they gel away from the countdown studio.

People have commented that they don't think Rachel likes him.

I might record it just for her - I really can't warm to Joe Wilkinson. If she doesn't like him, she puts on a pretty good act of pretending she does

As well as the series of 6 episodes which will be aired starting this Friday, they are going to film another 4 in July.

Oohh nice, thanks for that - didn't know they were starting a new run.

Having been to one of the filmings of '8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown' I'm under the impression it's just an act that Rachel appears to not like Joe while the cameras are rolling. Joe's role after all is to be a useless assistant to Rachel. Rachel does give the impression of being a bit demanding when the camera's aren't rolling but not to the same extent as Hollywood stars.

What gives you that impression?

Rachel and Joe seemed to get on fine when plugging their Dave show on Sunday Brunch a few weeks ago.

The way she was constantly gesturing to the production team and asking for things such as a different pen for the numbers game as she thought the nib was too thin.

Tonight

The worlds first e spliff.

Thank God for the mute button, it'll be put to good use tonight whenever Jonathon "shouting unfunny things make them funny" Ross opens his redundant mouth.

I liked the grand designs song. 😃

Does Rachel Riley actually get paid for standing there picking pieces of cardboard up.. And doing not a lot else

She's very good at the numbers game though

Enjoyable show tonight I thought, one of my favourite EOOTCDCs

Seems a tired format already.

I still enjoy it but i do find i fast forward through the dictionary corner stuff and a fair bit of the stuff involving joe wilkinson. there's always rachel though

I wish they would get back to being semi-serious with the quiz.

Lock isn't bothered because he's shit at the show and doesn't seem to like it.
Richardson has given up trying.
They keep getting stupid guests. Get some who have some braincells.

Well the week after next Josie Long is paired with Sean Lock with Rob Beckett paired with Jon Richardson which makes the teams pretty equal.

She's also required to do the equivalent of what Susie Dent does for the letters games e.g. if the best contestant effort is two away from the target then Rachel has to try and better that. However, with 4 contestants rather than 2 there's a higher chance at least one of the contestants will get the target and then Rachel just has to check the working out.

When Countdown first launched they had a letters girl (who put up and took down the letters cards), a numbers girl (who put up and took down the numbers cards) and a numbers expert (Carol Voderman) but they merged the 3 roles in to 1 and gave the role to Carol and then later Rachel.

What surprised me is that is requires three people to switch the letters board for the numbers board and vice versa mid-filming. I would have thought there would be a simpler way of doing it.

I fast-forwarded through it. I had been prepared to like David O'Doherty but quickly found his humour very weak. That left me with a conundrum, because he was paired with Susie Dent, but she wasn't enough to keep me watching.


Ross had two of the longest words.

The union probably wouldn't allow it. (I believe that in the original studio set, there were separate numbers and letters boards, so nothing needed switching.)

(During a regular Countdown recording, I think I counted some twenty assorted crew, and that was just on the studio floor. I'd imagine there'd be a few more for these special recordings.)