c4countdown

Hello everyone,

As some of you may know, Veronica and I have been doing Monday's recaps for a long time now. A l-o-n-g time. Probably four years or so together, five years or so for Veronica, as she was doing them solo before I stuck my oar in.

Anyway, over the last few weeks, I've been toying with the idea of giving it a rest for a while. Maybe just for a series, you know, give someone else a chance to have a go, if of course they want to have a go. Assuming somebody would like to do it, the position's up for grabs. It's not first come, first served though, if more than one person wants to take over, then you'll have to work out a rotation. And if nobody wants to do them, we'll just continue as normal with the current setup.

One small caveat - when the Champion of Champions comes around after next series, we'd like to recap the Mondays of that, at least, and will probably return full-time should a suitable opening, erm, open. Of course, by that time, whoever takes over may be indispensable, in which case we'll have to have a fight, possibly involving knuckledusters.

So, if you're interested in doing Mondays for next series, post below!

I'm sure I'm not the only one who enjoys your recaps more than anyone else's. You two have done an absolutely incredible job over many years and, especially in Veronica's case, a criminally under-appreciated one. I will happily take over Mondays from July if you two want a break, and no one could begrudge you that. I hope this is only an interlude in one of the highlights of the recapping calendar.

Charlie Reams wrote:I'm sure I'm not the only one who enjoys your recaps more than anyone else's. You two have done an absolutely incredible job over many years and, especially in Veronica's case, a criminally under-appreciated one. I will happily take over Mondays from July if you two want a break, and no one could begrudge you that. I hope this is only an interlude in one of the highlights of the recapping calendar.

Seconded! I am sure you have noticed, Jim, that nearly all of the more recent recappers basically have adopted your format - I know I do.

I seem to think you were one of the original recappers from Series 50 and you've never had a break since have you? And yes I like the recaps with the definitions, so thanks for that.

Martin

David O'Donnell wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:I'm sure I'm not the only one who enjoys your recaps more than anyone else's. You two have done an absolutely incredible job over many years and, especially in Veronica's case, a criminally under-appreciated one. I will happily take over Mondays from July if you two want a break, and no one could begrudge you that. I hope this is only an interlude in one of the highlights of the recapping calendar.

Seconded! I am sure you have noticed, Jim, that nearly all of the more recent recappers basically have adopted your format - I know I do.

Thanks! You are very kind, David. You're all very kind! I love you all, etc.

Charlie, nice to know it'll be in good hands until we return (for the C of C and thereafter, if that's cool with you).

It's not a snap decision, I just fancy a bit of a break for a while and to stop at the end of a series seems somehow more neat. Due to my amazing stick-in-the-mudness, I never go anywhere and it struck me that I've not actually missed doing a Monday recap since I started helping Veronica out with them in (I think) 2004. Normal people go on holiday and stuff, not me. Sad, eh? And yet I'm happy like that. I'm a bit odd, I think.

Needless to say, I'll probably be missing it a couple of weeks into the new series, so if anyone ever wants temporary cover, I'll step in. I'll still be recording and watching all the games, it won't be a problem.

And yeah, Veronica is under-appreciated in terms of what we do in the recaps. Basically, she sends me a spreadsheet with all the rounds in, I just do the numbers games and add the extra words and definitions where needed, plus the often spurious commentary. She hasn't really got into the new forum (although she does read the recaps), but I'll make sure she sees this thread. Always nice to see nice things said, and all that.

Thanks all again!

What I like about your recaps Jim is the background information you give about the players, and general commentary... it really adds colour to what might otherwise be a dry statistical exercise, and nobody does it as well as you. In the four years or so when I gave up watching regularly, if there was a contestant I wanted to know about (Craig Beevers etc.) I always went straight to the Monday recap(s) during his/her run, because I knew that would tell me more about him/her than any of the others would.

And not to miss a game in four years, incredible... even when I was watching avidly for the year or two before I appeared on the show, I always missed at least 10-20 games a series. I take my hat off to you, will miss your recaps, and look forward to your return.

Julian wrote:What I like about your recaps Jim is the background information you give about the players, and general commentary...

I absolutely agree, and I try to include similar stuff in my recaps - in fact, as Doddy alluded to, the whole style is nicked from Jim.

I always just assumed Veronica & Jim were a couple as well, since I couldn't recall seeing VP's name anywhere other than on Jim's recaps... what's the story here?

Corby wrote:

Julian wrote:What I like about your recaps Jim is the background information you give about the players, and general commentary...

I absolutely agree, and I try to include similar stuff in my recaps - in fact, as Doddy alluded to, the whole style is nicked from Jim.

I always just assumed Veronica & Jim were a couple as well, since I couldn't recall seeing VP's name anywhere other than on Jim's recaps... what's the story here?

Cheers, Jon and Julian and David. As for "the story", it goes like this (quite long, but bear with me)...

Veronica and I have never actually met and live miles and miles apart (she's in Oxfordshire, which I believe is down south somewhere) whereas I'm in sunny Redcar on the northeast coast. Although she'd watched the show before, Veronica only became a hardcore follower in May 2000 following a stroke; this meant that she wasn't able to take on so much work anymore and had the opportunity to catch afternoon TV.

She was one of the first regular recappers (and so one of the longest-serving, as we stand) - her first one (6th August 2003) can be found here (hopefully I've got those URL tags right)! This was way back in the days of gevincountdown, of course. Semi-regular recaps had been instigated by insane earmuff afficionado Zef - aka Zef - not long before this, although Zef's recaps tended to consist of several miles of spoiler space and a twenty-seven page explanation of the rules for every game, even though everyone already knew the rules. Martin used to keep an index of these recaps on his site back in those days. Is that site still up and running, Martin?

Anyway, Veronica continued doing the Wednesday recaps until October of that year, then switched to Mondays, but was never confident doing the numbers games (I don't know why, she very rarely got them wrong). In 2004, she emailed me and asked if I'd give her a hand (I'd started doing one-off recaps by this point, the first of mine I can find is this one, on 19th May 2004). Basically, Veronica would email the basics of the game (selections, contestant and DC words - i.e. most of it!) and I'd add in the numbers solutions and a few other bits and pieces. I think our first joint effort was on 21st June 2004 - this game - and the arrangement worked so well that we just carried on.

By the time we got to August 2004, I'd become insane with power and started adding in word definitions and often amazingly inaccurate predictions about how the winning contestant would fare in his or her subsequent games. This one is the first instance I can find that's like a modern recap; I've not revised the format much since then aside from a bit of tidying.

That's about it really. I'm now looking forward to seeing Charlie's Monday recaps and if all goes to plan, Veronica and I will be back for the C of C and subsequent series. Again, thanks for the kind words about what we've done so far, but the next series is in safe hands.

Countdown_Update_UK as it was known, it hasn't been updated since about 2005 but it still exists. It looks horrible and most of the information is now well out-of-date, but anyone who wants to can look at it, a Google search of the title should so it.

Martin

Incidentally that first link verifies that Chris Cummins had a valid word disallowed in his 123 game, in fact there's NOVATED for 7 in that selection which DC didn't get.

Martin

I hope one day there will be a movie about the action-packed world of recapping, with me played by John Travolta, and Kirsten Dunst as Jono.

Charlie Reams wrote:I hope one day there will be a movie about the action-packed world of recapping, with me played by John Travolta, and Kirsten Dunst as Jono.

I imagine after playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, Charlie is the next logical step!

dinos_the_chemist wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:I hope one day there will be a movie about the action-packed world of recapping, with me played by John Travolta, and Kirsten Dunst as Jono.

I imagine after playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, Charlie is the next logical step!

I was imagining him more in his Battlefield Earth role, but point taken.

Charlie Reams wrote:I hope one day there will be a movie about the action-packed world of recapping, with me played by John Travolta, and Kirsten Dunst as Jono.

Nah, Julian Rhind-Tutt off of Big Train and Green Wing would surely take on both roles:

Lol. By the way how did Zef's true identity come to light?

Julian wrote:Lol. By the way how did Zef's true identity come to light?

Long and ultimately very boring story, I'll email you the details tomorrow (daren't post it publicly- our Zef has a thing for threatening all and sundry with lawsuits).

I'll dare. Basically Zef's posts make it fairly obvious that

1) he likes Scrabble
2) he wears earmuffs

That really narrows it down quite a lot.

The similarity to Julian Rhind-Tutt is quite flattering. Some people have also drawn comparisons with Errol Flynn; notice that I've even imitated his minimalistic moustache:

Charlie are you a big Scrabble player then? (boo hiss) You seem to know a lot about the game and the players on the circuit anyway

Unless I'm missing something, this thread seems to have gone off at a bit of tangent - not that I'm complaining - and it seems we are still without a Monday recapper. Has Jim be kidnapped by the C4C mafia in an attempt to force him to continue with his legendary recaps, and I'm just out of the loop?

Anyways, if no one else wishes to take up the mantle for Series 59 (and please say so if you're keen!), I'm happy to do it for six months - although, like The Countdown Page, I can't promise to be as timely as some of you - although I will try to take less than 4 months to do them!

If no one comes forward in the next few days, I'll get to it...

Mike.

Ooh, just reread some of the posts and noticed that Charlie has already offered to do them - I certainly don't want to tread on any toes...

Anyway, my offer still stands. Charlie, do you want to go halves, or as you do Tuesdays (I think), should I do Mondays? Anyone else want to have a bash?

I'm currently doing halves on Tuesdays and it would seem weird to go halves on two different days. I might as well just do Mondays and you can split Tuesdays with Dinos. Does that seem reasonable?

Thanks for clearing things up, Charlie.

I'm happy to go halves with Dinos, although I'm not sure when my first recap is supposed to be! I've tried to work it out, and by my reckoning, Dinos was due to do July 1st, but you did it, so I will await my instructions from either yourself or Mr Sfyris!

Basically I made a mess of the whole thing, so I'll let Dinos do the organising from now on...

Charlie Reams wrote:Basically I made a mess of the whole thing, so I'll let Dinos do the organising from now on...

You've obviously been too focused on getting 99.9% in your exams! Belated congrats by the way...

Thanks

Sorted. I'm more than happy to share with Mike. (More than with Charlie anyway )

I've pmd him with regards to who does when etc.