Countdown host Colin Murray says iconic BBC show has one historical flaw

By Christopher Sharp, News Reporter

Countdown host Colin Murray has said what he thinks the show should actually be called (Image: PA)

Countdown has been a British television staple since it launched in November 1982 with the late Richard Whiteley at the helm of the show.

Over 40 years on and the show continues to pull in viewers on Channel 4 as contestants put their minds to the metal to work out the word and mathematics puzzles in front of them.

One of the mainstays over the years has been the iconic Countdown clock in the middle of the set which gives the contestants 30 seconds to decipher and complete the challenges set for them.

However, the current host of Countdown Colin Murray has spoken about what the show should actually be called and why it may have the wrong name.

The Countdown hosting team (Image: PA)

Answering a question on The Rest is Entertainment podcast hosted by Marina Hyde and Richard Osman, when answering another question about the show, he said: “Why’s Countdown called Countdown?

“That’s the question you should be asking. It goes from nought to 30 seconds. It should be called Countup. If it was truly living up to its name, the clock would start at the bottom where it is 30 seconds and count down to zero. So Countdown should really be called Countup.”

In response host Marina exclaimed: “Can I be the first to say that has broken me and I am out of the podcast? That’s epic. I’m going to be thinking about a lot of the issues raised in that answer for a long time.”

As well as talking about well-known and successful entities, Marina and Richard have also touched on those that have entered the public consciousness for all the wrong reasons, including one game which cost $200m to make, but turned out to be a flop.

The game in question was a first-person shooter game called Concord which has been described as the “biggest entertainment flop” in history. Richard explained that whilst at the time of recording, games like Counter-Strike has had 634,000 consecutive plays but Concord has had just 697.

Marina explained just how unfortunate the situation was for the game: “I would argue, and this is a big swing, but this could be the biggest entertainment flop of all time, okay? Because it has got no money. The most who were playing those first days of Black Myth: Wukong were 2.5 million concurrent, right?

“And you also had to pay $40 or whatever it cost in the UK for this...for Concord. To put this into perspective, they have withdrawn it from the market within a week. It will not come back and people are being refunded.”