WHEN was the last time you felt dread? I don't mean low-level fear, such as: did I leave my mobile phone on the train? Or: am I too late to get my dinner from Marks and Spencer's Simply Food? I mean the proper, temple-pounding, chest-constricting, my-God-the-pilot's-dead-SO-WHO'S-FLYING-THE-PLANE? kind.
For me, it was just the other week, in the conference facilities of a central Glasgow hotel, staring at a series of nine random capital letters scrawled in my own poor hand, willing them to reassemble themselves into a cogent word. Ideally, a nine-letter word. Hell, a seven-letter word. As an invisible timer counted down immutably toward zero, I would have taken a three-letter word.
Suddenly, I see FIT. Then, FEAT. And finally, FEATS. (Plurals are the last refuge of the Countdown scoundrel.) That's not bad, I tell myself. But the gentleman next to me has conjured up PACIFIST from the same selection. My feats have been flattened.
If you audition for X Factor and you're demonstrably rubbish, you can still generate a tiny charge of success by being featured on the TV show in all your Cowell-exasperating glory. Audition for Countdown and do badly, and the only witnesses are your quietly competent fellow auditionees and a self-possessed producer with a lot to get through.
In most other situations associated with dread - exams, job interviews, attempted kidnappings - it's possible to talk yourself out of trouble, obfuscating your limited knowledge with jokes, bluster and flim-flammery. Here, when asked a question - "Graeme, what did you get?" - your vocabulary is limited to words you've had to build by hand, letter by painful letter.
Sure, it's a chance to marvel at the rich, variegated tapestry of the English language with all its evolutionary knots, bobbles and frayed edges. But when all you have to work with is M, F, P, T and a soup of awkward vowels, even Shakespeare would struggle to make his words fly up. Panic short-circuits your mind, and you start to genuinely believe that EMFAPATE is in common usage.
Experiencing Countdown as a viewer rather than possible contestant, it never occurred to me where the players - that endless conveyor belt of politely intense retirees and precocious child prodigies - actually came from. And it did always seem like a conveyor belt; after the final Countdown conundrum, quizmaster Richard Whiteley (or Des Lynam, or Des O'Connor, depending on the era) would congratulate the winner, then turn his attention to the next day's challenger, watching keenly from the audience, raring to get stuck in.
To get your own shot at the title, all you have to do is fill in and return an old-fashioned application form. The next time an audition is in your area, you'll be invited along (in Scotland, they alternate between Edinburgh and Glasgow every six months or so). My own application is part whim, part self-improvement challenge - what better brain training than this alphanumeric battlefield? Though I confess to being a journalist, the producers suggest I keep it to myself.
In the week before the audition, I try to sharpen up my letters and numbers using an online Countdown simulator created by someone called Soo Reams, whose name sounds so much like an anagram it actually helps get me into the right mindset. I'm generally averaging five-letter words from each nine-letter selection, and am slowly getting better at the numbers round (regular viewers will realise the strategic importance of learning your 25 and 75 times tables).
But when the day arrives, I'm a wreck. My brain feels like it's shutting down, axeing its own synapses to enter a self-defensive fugue state. I mash my finger against the point of the spare Biro in my pocket, hoping the pain will refocus my mind (this technique is what got me through my Highers).
Sarah, the producer, has her own problems: she has to be Des, Carol and Dictionary Corner all rolled into one. She welcomes the seven hopefuls - all male, but ranging in age from 21 to over 65 - and explains the format of the audition (for efficiency, the rounds are pre-set, so sadly there's no mildly flirtatious "Can I start with a vowel, please, Carol?").
The massive Countdown clock, presumably, wouldn't fit in a hotel conference room, so we must imagine the famously tense musical cue that indicates time is up (but it means we get an extra five seconds added to the regulation 30). Then, we're off, transcribing the first series of letters, mentally clanging them together as they are read out in sequence, trying to create blocks of thought that might actually jigsaw together into a legitimate word.
The following half an hour now seems smeared; intense but also indistinct. In the fourth round, when I spot an actual nine-letter word camouflaged amongst TGLIEEDHD I am briefly transcendent: even before the 35 seconds expire, there's time to think: "this must be how Stephen Hawking feels ALL THE TIME". Of course, everyone else also gets DELIGHTED, which makes me go back to feeling like Steve McClaren.
Right up until the end, I am still, loosely, in contention, racking up some decent six- and seven-letter words (including the aesthetically-pleasing CUPCAKE and CORSET). The numbers rounds go surprisingly well, and I allow myself an additional sliver of self-belief. Then come three punishing Countdown conundrums in a row. The first nine-letter anagram is as opaque as a defective Magic Eye painting. The second makes me wish I'd smuggled in an Enigma decoding machine. The third might as well have been written in Cyrillic. Three strikes. I must be out. (The actual solutions suggest a not-so-hidden message: POINTLESS; INTELLECT; THWARTING) The end, in truth, is a relief. Afterwards, the other auditionees who are kind enough to speak to me each make the same general point: that there's a huge difference between playing along at home with a cup of tea and repeating the experience under test conditions. I can certainly emfapate with that, I tell them.
A few days later, an envelope with a Channel 4 postmark arrives. Within, there are a lot of amicable, conciliatory words, but the essence boils down to a mere two letters: NO. It's probably for the best.
Still, there's always Deal Or No Deal.
Tom Shields is away
