Laughing all the way to the bank. Des O'Connor has just signed up to Countdown for £500,000 a year.
Obviously I'm glad Des O'Connor has taken over Countdown as it means his tiny babies (conceived when he was over 70 - hurrah for Des. Woman dares to have baby over 28- BOOO!) won't have to go on to free school dinners, but I am a bit worried. It's a famously tough schedule - hundreds of shows recorded in a fortnight or so - that has already beaten Des Lynam down after only a year. (Desmond Tutu was busy with other commitments).
Richard Whiteley dealt with this by famously repeating the same three jokes in strict rotation, never bothering to learn contestants' names, and wearing whatever he'd most recently found behind a hedge, which made him peculiarly endearing. Des, however, is a different story altogether.
He can't listen to the weakest of anecdotes without laughing so hard he looks like he's about to vomit; and he can't ask someone their name without getting tears in his eyes. How's he going to cope with all the train-obsessed 12-year-old boys they have on there nowadays? And that's before we get to the end of the show, when they're all going to get up and sing a song together! I reckon each new, Desified Countdown is going to be about two and a half hours long. Well worth the £500,000 a year.
