On Countdown

On Countdown

"Durr dur de-durr-durr
De-dum de-dum a diddly-dum
Pooooooo!"

"And how many letters?"

"Five."

"Five? FIVE? I've got seven."

Worse, Scaryduckling has eight, making me look like some sort of illiterate baboon.

It's no good. I'm rubbish at Countdown.

Give me a jumble of vowels and consonants, I am completely unable to piece them together into a word of any length, and instead spend the thirty given seconds trying to go for the double word score allotted to swears.

Frankly, if the programme was all about the numbers game, I'd clear up, earning the admiration of a lightly-oiled Carol Vorderman into the bargain, while an equally lightly-oiled Susie Dent gloats in the background. But then, any woman who sits next to Gyles Brandreth – the man who put the 'dick' into Dictionary Corner – loses style marks all over the place that no amount of cunning linguistics could replace. Shiny rubber dress or no.

"Let's hear it, then."

"GLOPE"

"Glope?"

"G L O P E. Glope."

"And what's that, then?"

"It's a five-letter word."

"Meaning?"

"It's what you get when you stand too near to somebody on the Tokyo Metro."

"Oh."

"My name's Jim Davidson, I'm here all week."

"You're an idiot."

Yes. Yes, I know.