So, onwards and upwards with my Deal retrospective.
The fifth run started, but any hopes the purists had of a fresh start were dashed in the second game, that of Des Burns, who dealt £50,000 at 5-box, but was controversially offered the Banker's Gamble on a final to of £20,000 and £100,000. (He turned it down) But the game did have a good humour to it at least: one of the players failed to open his box properly!
But, from that point on, there was very little of note: September is the cruelest month for Deal. September 2009 was the epitome of this: nothing but blue wins and Power 5 undersellings (not to mention a 1p win), with only a couple of games that weren't this.
October was a little better, but emphasis on little. We had some good games, like Laura Hammel winning £35,000, but we also had games like that of Martin Trow, who won £1 and took it really badly. And in the Halloween specials, we had David Taylor win £40,000, but even that was overshadowed by the Banker knowing the £250,000 in his box thanks to a twist gone wrong, and Noel going berserk the next day!
Another controversial game saw Terry Court deal £41,000, but then get offered the Banker's Gamble on a final two of 50p and the £250,000. (He turned it down) We did get some more good games in the following weeks: Mike Peoples won £47,500, and two players in a row, Andrew Bulman and Michelle Matson, won £50,000 from the box. And after swapping too!
And then, we had Corinne Davies. She had a dream: to but a vintage Bentley, that cost £200,000. She had to win the £250,000 to achieve this. She chased it. She was left with a final two of 1p and £250,000. She was offered £88,000. She turned it down! And she won... 1p! Ouch! This still stands as one of the biggest, most memorable games of all time, though maybe not for the right reasons.
Two more 1p wins happened later in December, plus an appearance by future Apprentice candidate Sanjay Sood-Smith (who won £1,500.25). And moving into 2010, January got off to a good start: two Power 5 box wins, plenty of good money wins, even if the usual assortment of twists seemed to still be drowning the show.
We then saw a good £75,000 win from Justin Horne, and a memorable game from Eddie Moores, who was offered an enlarged offer if he proposed to his girlfriend. He agreed. So did she! And he won £30,000 as a result.
We didn't see anything else memorable for a while, until two big wins in just over a week: Caine Smalling won £72,000, and then Ramesh Tanna won £77,000. The latter would prove to be the biggest win of the fifth run.
It was around this time that I started watching the show regularly again. The first game I saw after coming back was De Pady winning 1p. We subsequently had Jean Raynor win £50,000, and Harry Smith win £26,000, an offer conditional on the Banker getting a date with his wife!
And then another controversial game: Cheryl Hosford won £75,000 on a 1p-£75,000 final two, via a Banker's Gamble. The thing was: she'd only dealt £7,000. Many considered this a forced big win. Others were pleased, as it gave them something to be pleased about on the day England went out of the World Cup!
We did see two more far more satisfactory big wins from Del Mahmut (£70,000) and Kelly Daley (£50,000) before a fairly ordinary run of games to the end of the season. Only game worth mentioning was Dennis Coy, who dealt £15,000 at the third offer, then claimed afterwards it was a mistake. He later dealt £7,500, but was offered the chance to get the money he lost back if £15,000 was in his box. It was. The purists, and quite a few neutrals, while happy for him, were furious.
One summer break later, the show returned for it's sixth run. Not much to mention, except a highly unlucky misfit: Stephen Richardson and Jade Turner both dealt circa £25,000 sums that were poor for the board they had, and missed six figure offers. In between then, Balbina Sian turned down £45,000, and crashed (albeit just to £15,000); if she'd had either of their games, it would've been much better.
Not much else happened that was memorable. It says a lot that an ordinary £10,000 box win was treated as one of the games of that period. It wasn't until Marshall Eglon won £36,500 in a very unfairly forgotten game that people began to perk up again.
Indeed, it paved the way for two huge wins later that month: Alex Gee ended with the same final two as Corinne, 1p and £250,000, and received the same offer, £88,000, and took it! And then Christopher King won £100,000, the first six figure win six Alice's game 19 months previously!
Not much else memorable happened in the aftermath of those games. Even a special week of shows for the show's 5th birthday wasn't that memorable, and when we did get a promising game, that of Glenn Pond, his partner talked him into dealing a poor offer of £44,000, which cost him the Jackpot.
Even the Christmas specials that year produced little of note, except for Ant Hernandez, who won £75,000, but the New Year produced a major note of memorability: the show moved to an hour long slot.
Many were not pleased with this change, feeling 45 minutes was quite enough. To be honest, I was unsure about this at first, but, a couple of months later, it was hard for me to recall when it was just 45 minutes long.
To be fair, the bad mood about the change of time was probably worsened by the fact that January 2011 was a very poor month for the show, with too many games with unnecessary twists. But when Dale Speight won £100,000 from his box, everyone was delighted, and the fans' faith in the show was restored.
It was complimented nicely a couple of days later by Derrick Preddie's good comedy game, and £12,000 win. And another classic comedy game from Tomas Stone, who only won £8,000, but provided much humour, including a nice memorable story about a blow-up doll in the Falklands!
We had plenty of good games throughout that period: Dylan Hall's dramatic £21,000 win, a good comedy game from Archie Jack, who won £16,000, and a hilarious trainwreck from Danielle Barron, who won no money, but did get a consolation holiday, which he husband had to pay the Banker £50 for!
No Power 5 wins, but the good times soon returned in April, when Paul Bolger won £20,000 from his box, and Sophie Dempsey won £46,000, the first Power 5 sum given away for a while. And also Anthony Routh, who won £11,500, an offer bolstered after he agreed to throw his wife out of the studio! (It made sense in context!). And it was also around this time that I joined the Unofficial DoND forum.
But the biggest, most memorable game of the year was still to come: Suzanne Mulholland's game. The third £250,000 win! And, while probably not the best, certainly one of the more memorable ones. I mean, she did achieve the perfect final two of £100,000 and £250,000! And swap! And even then, she probably only made it that far due to the offers being poor up to that point, due to two exceptionally statistically poor deals earlier that week.
We couldn't have another £250,000 win so soon after Suzanne, could we?! Kerry-Anne Karlson gave it a good go. Too much of a good go. She had a final two of £10,000 and the £250,000, and was offered £140,000! That's above the average! And she turned it down! She won the £10,000. She admitted afterwards that she got carried away in the heat of the moment, and regretted doing what she did. This stands as the most reckless gamble of all time.
Even more ironically, it came the day after poor Rob Lewis, a fellow Aspergers sufferer, dealt £8,000, and missed out on the £250,000. Everyone was in tears for him. He totally didn't deserve it, is the general opinion among neutrals.
Despite these setbacks, we seemed to have hit a good run of games: we saw at least one big money game every week. June 2011 is perhaps my favourite month of the 2010s. We had games like Sam Hunt winning £100,000 (half of which went to charity), and Anthony Usher and his brother providing a good comedy game capped off with a deserved £20,000 win. And also one of my favourite games of all time: Micole Boyce's win of £71,000.
By now, we were into July, and beginning to wind down for the summer break. We ended with a run of fairly average games, including 2 1p wins, and finished the season on a high with two great games from Alphonso Stewart, who won £60,000, and Barnaby Judge, who won £15,000, not being fooled by a bluff from the Banker.
2011, despite the fact that people were not totally satisfied due to the longer slot, was a good year for the show. And I'm not finished with it yet: we'll get on to that next time.
I'll be back tomorrow with my review of last night's OC.
No comments:
Post a Comment