It's 7:00 pm in Manchester on 13th April. Having sat in the audience for the last six shows, it was time for me to take to the challenger's chair. Roger had lost two shows before, after 3 wins and 316 points, to Joe who then lost to Jennifer Strachan. So could I beat the Scottish lass who wants to teach Gallic?
After the stress of the interview I got off to a rocky start and didn't even manage one away on the first numbers so was 28-13 down at the first ads. Then came round 5. MARDIEST was fairly easy to spot but then relax the eyes and let the letters rearrange themselves...
Then two rounds later Jennifer got CAPTIONER disallowed, when RECAPTION would have been fine and I only had PROTEIN and not even CREATION/REACTION. This seemed to shatter her confidence.
Then came a solved second numbers, selected as a T for Tony (3 big ones), and some Countdown classic words to spot. It was soon round 15 and the conundrum, being 43 ahead already. And what do I like? I knew after 15 seconds!
So final score was 42-95, but no century and as the maximum score was 145 I could have done better!