I’ve finally found something which I haven’t seen in at least 10 years. The Richard Whitely / Countdown “Gotcha”.

For those of you unfamiliar with the “Gotcha”, it was a section of the Saturday night twatfest known simply as “Noel’s House Party”, where Noel Edmonds would play pranks on unsuspecting celebrities, with often un-hilarious consequences. You may remember this section of the show also brought us the pink and yellow spawn of Satan himself known as Mr. Blobby.

Thankfully, there was one good episode. The world, his dog and its fleas know that I am a lifelong fan of Countdown, and I remember howling with laughter at this particular wind-up. I recorded part of it, when it was originally aired, but since then, the tape got damaged and I haven’t seen it since.

Obviously, they couldn’t show the full programme on Noel’s House Party – instead they cut it down to about 5 minutes.

Whilst clicking around on youtube, I found it. But wait, there’s more! It’s the *entire* episode of Countdown! Roughly 50 minutes worth of footage, including “mistakes” which weren’t shown in the NHP broadcast – especially Richard’s “You do know you’re talking a load of bollocks, don’t you?” outburst. There is also (finally) the explnation why there were two new contestants.

Here are the links to the videos. Watch them while they’re hot, or before someone at Google HQ presses the big ‘delete’ button on them…

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

It’s a billionth generation VHS rip, but you don’t need good quality video to appreciate this.