'I cheated my way onto Countdown and made history with how it backfired'

When one quiz show aficionado cheated his way onto Channel 4's word game Countdown, he had no idea how horrendously it would backfire on him. James Belshaw, 46, from Surrey has appeared on numerous quizzes over the years, including Pointless, The Weakest Link, Lingo and Tipping Point. But when he landed a phone audition for Countdown, things quickly went wrong.

But since the audition didn't take place in person, he was able to use an anagram solver and numbers solver on his computer, telling Spin Genie: "I'm going to say it, I did cheat. I wasn't given, like, nines or having to solve all the numbers."

The audition was a success and James headed to Manchester to film his episode. But by the time he'd watched previous iterations of the game show on telly, he phoned his wife in a panic and told her "I'm going to get destroyed!"

James went ahead with his episode but became the lowest-scoring male in Countdown's history in his 2005 episode. It's not his only record-breaking stint - he and his wife held the Guinness World Record for the longest kiss, an anecdote he used to get more screentime on quiz shows.

Speaking about how best to make it onto the box, he said: "They tend to cast people who've done a bit [of TV]. There's quite a few of us, actually.

"They can see how we behave on TV and they know you're not gonna be like a Bullseye contestant from the 1980s where they're all like, 'I work in the mines'. That in itself is brilliant - I love Bullseye, I love watching all those old-school style contestants."

He added the tip: "I think you can make an interesting story out of something quite mundane. If you think about what you like doing, there's always some sort of quirk to it, you can't just say you like fishing and golf."