Illicit afternoon delights with a blonde in a red dress with red lipstick

Hermione must never know...

I admit it. I plead guilty. There is no denying the charge. I was on the doss. A half-decent defence counsel could put up a case suggesting that I was merely recharging my batteries, having a little ‘me time’, taking a deserved rest. Yet it is pointless wasting the court’s time by fighting the case.

The jury would still be obliged to conclude that I was swinging the lead, dodging my responsibilities, shirking. There is no arguing the fact that any able-bodied person, under the age of 70, not confined to a nursing home, who is found watching ‘Countdown’ in the middle of a sunny afternoon must be mitching.

‘Countdown’! That was my late grandmother’s favourite programme. Callers to her home need expect no cuppa until contestants had finished grappling with the letters or the numbers, and presenter Richard Whiteley was bidding viewers goodbye.

Richard, you may recall, was a comfortably chummy Englishman who never lost his awe at the ability of others to re-order the letters C, I, R, H, S, P, I, B, O into the word ‘bishopric’. This task had to be accomplished as the trademark clock counted down the allotted 30 frantic seconds.

Of course the real brains of the organisation was Carol Vorderman. She was blessed with the stellar mathematical skills which enabled her to weave a random selection of numbers towards the target of another random number. I seem to remember that Giles – no, make that Gyles - Brandreth , an Englishman even chummier than Richard, was on hand with a stack of dictionaries to check some of the more unlikely words thrown up in the heat of battle.

Thoughts of ‘Countdown’ were stored away undisturbed in some dormant recess of my mind along with memories of ice-cream cones on some seaside pier and goals scored for Shamrock Rovers by George Best wannabe Mick Leech. These filed away thoughts might have remained interred, had I not been at a loose end, on my own in the house, and tempted to reach for the remote.

First stop on the covert afternoon skip around the stations was Canadian minor league baseball, followed by a few seconds of people not smiling at each other – that must have been ‘East Enders’. And then, by happy accident, restless tapping of the zapper took me away from Albert Square to somewhere immediately familiar.

The makers of ‘Countdown’ certainly know better than to tamper with a winning formula. The only thing in the programme’s studio set which appears to have changed since the eighties is that a computer monitor has replaced Gyles’s pile of hard-cover dictionaries. Brandreth himself is no longer involved, making way for a bespectacled woman who sounds suspiciously like the poet Pam Ayres.

Unfortunately, Richard Whiteley died more than a decade ago but a suitably chummy substitute has slotted seamlessly into the presenter’s chair. Miss Vorderman has moved on to other things, allowing her role to be filled by a blonde lady with a ready smile whose colour of lipstick is the perfect colour match of her figure hugging red dress. Far be it from me to comment on female physique. Nevertheless, watching her in action, I could not help feeling that there must be many a game old buffer hauling himself up straighter in his wheelchair at the sight of her pulling out the vowels and the consonants.

I was suddenly cast back to the parlour of my late grandmother, the pair of us grappling with impossible anagrams and both stumped by the sums, happy to wait until the end before putting the kettle on. ‘Countdown’ re-visited was brilliant, a surprise treat, laced with the pleasure of illicit indulgence. The Pooch is still looking at me askance since I fist-pumped in jubilation at finding a seven-letter word where the contestants only managed six. The sums still had me stumped, of course.

By the time darling Hermione returned to Medders Manor, I was making a great show of tidying the kitchen counter and spoke earnestly of my intention to clean the oven at first opportunity. She probably believed airy assurances that I had spent much of the day labouring over a hot lap-top. But all the while, my thoughts were on ‘Countdown’ and a bewitching lady in a red dress.