A Consonant Professional
Countdown champion Clarke Carlisle will fulfil a lifelong ambition by lining up for Burnley against Portsmouth on Saturday. Carlisle, better known as a man of letters and numbers, has long been interested in kicking stuff around a field and will get his chance at Turf Moor. “I can’t say it will be better than solving a conundrum, but it will be up there.”
Carlisle reveals that the production team on the show have already been taking the mickey out of him before his appearance whistling the Match of the Day theme and producing red cards when he fails the arithmetic challenge. When asked how he might face up to marking some of the Premiership’s most feared strikers such as Drogba and Rooney, Carlisle explained that nothing could be as daunting as “staring down Suzi Dent with a dictionary”.
Carlisle added that he was looking forward to disproving the public perception that all boffins are “malco-ordinated social deficients,” arguing that there are “plenty of people on the quiz circuit that can play a pass”. He was however bracing himself to be the target of a barrage of consonants and vowels mainly arranged into four-letter words.
