Julian Fell
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Julian Fell is a British Countdown champion. He was the 48th champion of the show, and perhaps the greatest player in its history. Over his eight heat games, he scored 924 points, which smashed the previous record held by Chris Wills by 49 points. He is also the only player in history to score a century in all eight heat games. He continued this with a century in the quarter-final, semi-final and final. Julian finished as Series 48 champion with 11 wins, 0 defeats and 11 centuries.
During his eighth game, he broke numerous all-time Countdown records. He scored 138 points with three nine-letter words, both of which had never been done before. Amazingly he broke both of his own records just two shows later with four nine-letter words and 146 points.
He returned for the 11th champion of champion tournaments as the hot favourite. His first round match against Terrence O'Farrell was a routine win for him, but his quarter-final against Graham Nash was anything but.
Julian took a small lead early in the game when Graham had FORMICA disallowed. He seemed to be going further ahead when he announced he had an eight-letter word compared to Graham's seven. However Julian's submission of GAMBIERS was ruled invalid since gambier is a mass noun and, according to Countdown's rules on mass nouns, its use in the plural is disallowed. This gave Graham a one-point lead which he held until the final round. However Julian could win by nine points if he could solve the conundrum. However it was Graham who solved it first and won the game 120 to 109 - the second highest losing score in history, meaning that Julian continued his streak and scored 13 centuries in 13 games, despite losing his final game.
Julian lived in York before becoming a Law student at Cambridge University. Since his run on Countdown, he has appeared on BrainTeaser and visited the Edinburgh Countdown club on numerous occasions.
