c4countdown

(I hope I'm not breaching board etiquette with this post - if so, somebody tell me and I'll nix it.)

On May 17th this year, my other half is doing the Great Manchester Run to help raise funds for the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. If you're a Generous Type™ and would be prepared to sponsor him a couple of pounds, we would both be immensely grateful. You can make a donation here.

(There's a small but significant benefit for me too in this, in that if lots of people from C4C sponsor him, it might stop him moaning about the amount of time I spend here.)

How nice!

I tried to donate, but the site kept crashing on me. I'll try again later.

Worked okay for me, although I paid through Paypal which made it pretty easy.

Massive thanks to those of you who sponsored Michael for yesterday's Great Manchester Run. He ran the 10km in 53 minutes 53 seconds - not his best time, but it's hard to keep pace when there are 33,000 other people jostling for position around you! His overall position was a respectable 8459 and I was immensely proud of him.



The event itself was brilliant. I'd been poorly overnight on Saturday and it was a struggle to get myself together yesterday morning to accompany Michael to the start line - but once I got there, the atmosphere gave me such a lift that I felt instantly better.

We had a great weekend overall in Manchester. Those of you attending upcoming recordings will hopefully be able to spend some time enjoying this vibrant city. It was a strange feeling walking past the Granada studios on Friday afternoon and wondering whether Countdown was being played at that very moment just a few yards away. I also had the opportunity to pay homage to my lifelong hero at his memorial in Sackville Gardens.



If you're visiting Canal Street, I recommend a quick detour over the Sackville Street bridge to visit this peaceful spot and contemplate what this remarkable man bequeathed to us all.

I just bought the Hodges biography of Turing (having got it from the library ages ago). I can't help feeling the "suicide" verdict was due to bias..... I work close to the National Physical Laboratory and can just imagine the looks on the faces of the management when he proposed building a computer which could play chess. They wanted a giant adding machine....

Excellent stuff, Phil. Incidentally, Michael looks exactly like recently retired periennal 4th-place decathlete Dean Macy.

Awesome sounds like you both had a great time. Well done Michael.

53 minutes sounds pretty good to me. I reckon I could do it in 53 days or so.

Charlie Reams wrote:53 minutes sounds pretty good to me. I reckon I could do it in 53 days or so.

I would need it translated into an equivalent score in Countdown.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:53 minutes sounds pretty good to me. I reckon I could do it in 53 days or so.

I would need it translated into an equivalent score in Countdown.

Well it means maintaining an average speed of 11.1km/h which is pretty much like an 11 max game, televised of course, with a few tricky words thrown in like TIRAMISU.

Charlie Reams wrote:53 minutes sounds pretty good to me. I reckon I could do it in 53 days or so.

Well, he was quite chuffed at doing it in less than twice Hailie Gebreselassie's time of 27'39" (and only mildly disconcerted at seeing Gebrselassie being interviewed by TV crews after finishing the race while Michael was still waiting to cross the start line).

Charlie Reams wrote:53 minutes sounds pretty good to me. I reckon I could do it in 53 days or so.

I did a ten km run, two weeks ago, in 59 minutes so that definitely sounds like a respectable time compared to mine.