Countdown to Mallaig for local Gaelic teacher

Halo, agus Failte gu Cunnt Sios, Toisichidh sinne!' - not the usual opening line to a popular quiz show, watched by millions on Channel 4, but Mallaig Gaelic Medium teacher, Dawn MacPhie, just could not turn down the offer to open the show with Gaeldom’s equivalent of 'Hello and welcome to Countdown. Let’s begin', writes Iain Ferguson.

 

Dawn travelled to Manchester during the school summer holidays to record the show, but was sworn to secrecy about the outcome until after it was broadcast on October 20.

 

A long-term fan of the show, answering all the questions from her couch, she decided to have a go herself and was delighted to be accepted to find out how she would do, live in the studio under the watchful eye of host Colin Murray.

 

On the day itself she found herself pitched against fellow Scot, Alan Young from Paisley, the reigning champion, now taking his seat with four wins in a row.

 

For those not in the know, each of the daily half-hour programmes are recorded in a block on the same day, competitors and and presenters taking a change of clothes for each different edition.

 

In the first task of composing as big as word as possible from nine randomly chosen letters, Dawn and her opponent scored the maximum points, much to the surprise of the host who said they must have made history by both using all the letters in the first round.

 

Dawn took the most points for the second word, followed by another good score for the number challenge in which a series of numerals have to be added, subtracted, multiplied or divided to get as close as possible to the randomly chosen total.

 

Dawn kept ahead of her competitor for much of the show, but lost ground when one of her words was not allowed. She submitted the word ‘crawlies’, from her letters, as in creepy-crawlies, but on reference to the Oxford English Dictionary, it could not be found as a stand-alone word, so was discounted. She ended with a score of 82 against 117.

 

Dawn said: 'Unfortunately I didn’t win and even Colin said that my score would normally have have been a winner, but I was unlucky to be up against one of the strongest competitors they have ever had, winning his fifth show in a row.

 

'When I was leaving and asked for a picture to show the children at school, Rachel Riley asked how to spell the place I was from, looked out the letters and put them up on the board for me. That was a really nice gesture'.

 

There was also some brief time away from lessons for pupils as they watched the programme with their teacher in class to show what she had been up to, with Dawn challenging some of the older one to play along and see if they could beat her score - which they had fun doing, but did not manage to better.