Ben Wilson returned for the Championship of Champions in January 2004, where he narrowly beat Geraldine Hylands 94-91 before meeting Series 47 runner-up Tom Hargreaves, to whom he finally lost his unbeaten record when the game ended 131-98 in Tom's favour. This is Ben's account of the proceedings...
I left my tale of Dick, Carol and me on Christmas Day 2001, having just won the series championship and taken delivery of twenty very big, very expensive leather-bound dictionaries. I'd been told in the bar afterwards that a Champion of Champions series was a likelihood for the future: even if it wasn't in the immediate pipeline, it was likely to happen. In the meantime, however, I still had plenty of fame to absorb, not least, in January 2002, an appearance on Richard and Judy (that show you watch the first few minutes of after Countdown) representing Mensa - a first, and almost certainly a last, it has to be said - my not giving the impression that all Mensans were elitist snobs didn't go down all that well. Ah well, never mind.
In the months that passed after my Richard and Judy appearance, I kept getting asked a few select questions - chief amongst them were "What show are you going on next?" and "When are you going on Countdown again?" In fact, I was asked that second question quite often, and after my plan to answer the first question with an appearance on Fifteen-to-One fell through, coupled with Number One's disappearance from the airwaves, left me with the conclusion that a Champion of Champions series might just be my next best chance of getting some more much-needed fame. BBC1 replacing their quiz shows with shows about boring people's holidays and houses didn't help matters much, either.
Summer soon came, bringing with it the Series 47 final rounds - eight octochamps and seven great matches, and one clear favourite for the up and coming Champion of Champions (whenever it would be) in the shape of Chris Wills - at least, at the time, he was favourite.
Confirmation of the Champion of Champions came through in August- along with the first round draw and recording dates (which were very much subject to change). While the prospect of a match against Geraldine Hylands wasn't as daunting as facing, say, David Williams or Kevin McMahon, I knew that it would be a far from easy game. However, from the draw, two games in particular drew my attention to them - Chris Wills vs. David Williams and the potential quarter-final between Tom Hargreaves and myself. The dates were set for Mid-November...
And changed...
And changed again... Fortunately, by November I'd started a new job at Poundland (selling various stuff) and getting time off wasn't a problem - the days were booked, and on the morning of the Tuesday, I set off from Lincoln Train Station, heading towards Leeds.
After nearly being left in Doncaster by the train station's decision to give us all of 30 seconds notice that the Leeds train would be switching platforms, we eventually arrived at Leeds train station. One extremely brief taxi ride later and, accompanied by my wonderful mother (in the absence of my brother) entered Yorkshire Television Centre, once again.
Amazingly, despite being at least half an hour early, we were not the first there - early Series 48 contestant Grace Page had arrived just a bit earlier, and while we waited to be shown through to the green room, we discussed the latest series of the show - I was not surprised in the least to discover that Julian Fell had won the series, following an average score of 115 in the heats and a couple dozen new records later, he had overtaken Chris as favourite for the championship - however, as we were to find out, there is no such thing as an unbeatable contestant. Eventually, we were shown through to the green room, where we waited for the other contestants to arrive... and waited... and waited... in the wrong place, so it turned out. We eventually decided to get a bite to eat at around half past twelve (ten minutes before the other contestants packed out the green room, coincidentally), but not before getting our first view of the new set - it has to be said, on first glance, the purple/mauve and white stripes were an eyesore to say the least, but it did have the redeeming feature of growing on you, after a while. We waited in the canteen for a bit for something to happen (aside from Damian running in, distributing meal vouchers), and we were rewarded when Chris Wills dropped in to get something to eat, and informed us that everyone was waiting in the green room, so along with Grace, I relocated to the green room (I had to leave mother behind, unfortunately, due to the fact that it would get awfully cramped in there) where I met everyone else (or, in the case of Loz and Tom, met again). Eventually, the set was deemed suitable to film in (all lighting/camera issues having finally been resolved) and everyone moved into the studio to watch Game #1 - Loz Sands vs. Mike Calder.
Loz vs. Mike produced a lot of surprises, not least Mike's defeat - a champion, an undefeated champion at that, he was expected to do well in the championship, but if you've been out of practice for too long then there's nothing that could be done. Still, for the Champion of Champions series, 77-60 was a surprisingly low score line. However, all that was about to change, as there was a quick turn around before Game #2 - Chris Wills vs. David Williams.
Chris vs. David, amazingly, managed to live up to the hype - a tense, close match, brilliantly obscure words like GUNSMITH, a nine letter word (albeit an obvious one) and a one-second (if that) crucial conundrum, combined with a final score of 113-111 to Chris gave us probably the game of the championship. Next up, after a quick break, was Grace vs. Rupert Stokoe.
The break was taken very quickly indeed, and we were soon back in the studio, watching, in what was a somewhat unexpected victory, Rupert triumphing over Grace with a comfortable win. It was teatime now, so I had plenty of opportunity to fill up prior to my first hot seat appearance of the championship.
I entered the canteen to find a rather irritated mother - no one had informed her that she could come through to the studio so she was left in there - one quick apology later, and all was settled, except my stomach.
Fortunately, one shepherd's pie later, my stomach was settled. Then, I was installed in the hot seat, and my stomach became less settled again. Game 4 was John Rawnsley vs. Kevin McMahon, not seen as a potential classic but that was the way it turned out - Kevin was one of the favourites going into the championship, but an unfortunate wrong buzz on a crucial conundrum gave John the 99-97 win. Half the second round draw was now known, leaving only half left to be revealed. One quick turn around, and I was back in the champion's chair.
The first thing I noticed about the set, up close, was that they'd finally got rid of the shag pile from the desks, replacing it with some nice suede instead. The conundrum buttons had also been jazzed up, proper metal buttons replacing the previous plastic efforts. Another nice effect, which sadly doesn't show up on screen well, if at all, is the black border around the edge of the desks - it's actually negatives of dictionary pages, and a very nice effect indeed - a shame it doesn't come out brilliantly on TV.
Once again, the lights were dimmed, the titles rolled and we were underway...
Immediately, I believed I was on to a winner, getting an eight to Geraldine's seven in Round 1. Unfortunately, I was beaten right back in Round 2, my six being bested by Geraldine's seven, and I remained one point in the lead right up until Round 5 - the numbers. Round 4 provided a good amount of laughs, though - MOSHING was, legitimately, the only seven I'd spotted and I knew from past experience it'd be allowed so I had no fear of offering it, just a fear of being asked what it meant. At least my reputation of being a Countdown "joker" was alive and well - whether that's a good thing or not, I have no idea. For the numbers, I'd decided beforehand that six small numbers, despite serving me very well in the past, would not be the way to go for the first round match, so, in an attempt to "make up for lost big ones", I selected two large and four small (well, that and I really couldn't be doing with Carol's inevitable comments about my choice). It was a tough target, and, fortunately, Geraldine fluffed it right at the last, handing me an 11-point lead going into interval one, and another of Martin Jarvis's funny anecdotes. During my final round recordings, I considered myself lucky to have had my matches "refereed" by two funny men in Denis Norden and Geoffrey Durham (the latter in particular), and it was no different with Martin. Into the break I went, 11 points to the good...
...Which immediately got cut back to five points to the good. I honestly don't know what made me risk DAPPERS when it's so obviously an adjective - perhaps having BONNIES allowed in my grand final lulled me into a false sense of security regarding S's and where you can put them on words. Both Geraldine and I scoring in all the remaining rounds kept the difference at five points going into the third half (eh?).
All throughout the championship up to that point, I'd been reminded of one of the more obscure words that had cropped up during my heat games - GODETIA. In many of the previous rounds, I'd seen it nearly come up on many occasions - FODETIA, GODESIA and GOBETIA were among the more memorable misspellings that cropped up. Imagine my delight when, in the third half, the word itself, complete with an "s" to make a plural, cropped up. Fortunately, it obviously mustn't have cropped up during any of Geraldine's games, as she was stuck on seven, and I took a 13-point lead, my biggest of the entire game. It remained that way up until the conundrum, which Geraldine unscrambled to become REPUTABLE in five seconds (not that she wasn't before, of course) while I was stuck floundering on PERTURBABLE which, as well as the fact it's 11 letters long, is also not a word. Sadly for Geraldine, while it was REPUTABLE, the conundrum wasn't enough to get her the win, as I ran out the winner by 94 points to 91, my narrowest win to date (previously, the narrowest win had been by nine points over Steve Sandalls in the final in Christmas 2001). Naturally, Geraldine was ruing missing the first numbers game, believing that she'd have had the game in the bag had she not messed it up - and she may very well have done, too. As it was, I was into the quarter-finals, playing either John Rainsden or Tom Hargreaves in the first game on Thursday (happily, the draw meant that I didn't play any games on Wednesday, but as I was technically still participating, could take part in all the photos, bar, etc.) With the day's recording over and done with, it was time to make a quick retreat to said bar...
The bar was as good, and as free, as always, as I sat discussing the day's events with Chris, Tom, and Graham Nash, who had arrived at the studios earlier (he would be playing in the last heat game on Wednesday against David Ballheimer, who had also arrived early). As always, the bar came to an end at 11pm, meaning it was back to the Holiday Inn Express. Fortunately, unlike the previous two times I'd stayed there, I actually managed to get a decent night's sleep. By decent night's sleep, I of course mean 4 hours+ rather than 30 minutes before being awoken by a knackered TV aerial. Lo, Wednesday soon dawned, and before long, it was back to the studios, even if it was for a "day off"...