Set your video/DVD recorder/hard disc recorder/magic space box for Channel 4 at 3.30pm tomorrow (Tuesday) – or, if you’re not in gainful employment or work from home, just switch on the TV – for I will be a contestant on long-running cult afternoon game show Countdown.

I’ll be joined by current champion Vivienne, hosts Des O’Connor and Carol Vorderman, and Susie Dent and Rick Wakeman in Dictionary Corner.

One from the top and five from the bottom please, Carol.

Ahem.


Yes, it’s my ITV1 debut, completing a full house of terrestrial channels. Hurrah for YouTube. And yes, I did just point my phone at the TV to get that image: that’s about as hi-tech as I get on New Year’s Eve.

The clip shown, which enjoyed pride of place between David Cameron himself and naughty Sion Simon on ITV’s I Was There: The People’s Review 2006, was very short – you can see the full version here.

I saw part of an episode of Numb3rs last week. The show is about a mathematician who solves crimes with the FBI, which, believe it or not, doesn’t actually appeal to me. It seems a bit sub-Monk and the 3 in the title is just wrong. Still, it had my favourite line from recent TV, spoken by Peter MacNicol, off of Ally McBeal and the upcoming sixth series of 24, as a geeky academic:

“I know a shortcut through Metallurgy.”

I’ve never been quite sure what metallurgy is, but I know I don’t want to catch it.

If you’ve seen the excellent US animated series Family Guy, you may be familiar with this clip of Stewie Griffin performing a version of Elton John’s Rocket Man:


Naturally I assumed when I first saw this that the writers had come up with this particularly absurd performance. How wrong I was. Back in the dim and distant past (the 1970s), some fule invited (or possible allowed) host William Shatner, notorious “interpreter” of hit songs, to, er, perform this track at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards. We are blessed that a recording of this momentous event has survived. Do watch it all the way through to fully appreciate its, um, brilliance.