Spoilers for Monday 2nd February 2026 - Les Dennis returns as host

[Philip A]

With Colin Murray unavailable for the recordings, Les Dennis returns to guest host this week’s 5 shows. Great to have him back.

[Gavin Chipper]

Rachel was talking about some guy who owns a private train and being the only person in Britain to do so without naming him. The only person I found was Jeremy Hosking and he seems a dubious character to say the least.

Also Callum seems OK at the numbers but doing (100-3)-7×3 and 50x8+9×8, wasting a number each time seems like he's at full stretch, especially the 472 one where it was 59×8, and which he made look quite hard.

[Toby McDonald]

AVERMENT in R5

[Howie Myers]

r12: OPALINE
r13: ARBITER

[Martin Hurst]

With Colin Murray unavailable for the recordings, Les Dennis returns to guest host this week’s 5 shows. Great to have him back.

Where is Colin?

[Philip A]

With Colin Murray unavailable for the recordings, Les Dennis returns to guest host this week’s 5 shows. Great to have him back.

Where is Colin?

Well according to the Countdown Wiki Colin had back pain apparently. Unsure if that’s legit but he’s billed to return next week.

[Philip Wilson]

Callum seems OK at the numbers but doing (100-3)-7×3 and 50x8+9×8, wasting a number each time seems like he's at full stretch, especially the 472 one where it was 59×8, and which he made look quite hard.

Thought that too, but then I made my 59 by doing 50+7+1+1 despite having a spare 8!
I did the last numbers quite strangely too: 6 * 50 = 300 + 25, then 4 * 75 (= another 300) / 100 for the 3 to add = 328!