Just A Minute

 

Well, after combing the archives on Dean's site, I've come up with the following list of players who won at least one of their first two episodes as panellists on either the radio or the television versions (excluding the television series where the players were in teams).

Radio:
Derek Nimmo (first ever winner)
Lucy Bartlet
Nicholas Parsons (in his debut as a panelliest in Series 2)
Tim Brooke-Taylor
Peter Cook (2nd episode)
Tim Rice (joint with Kenneth Williams, Peter Jones, AND Derek Nimmo!)
Brian Johnston
Libby Purves
Gyles Brandreth (won first TWO episodes, second joint with Peter Jones)
Victoria Wood (joint with Peter Jones)
Jeremy Beadle
Jan Ravens
Martin Jarvis (2nd episode)
Richard Stilgoe (2nd episode, joint with Peter Jones)
Richard Morton
Jenny Eclair (2nd episode)
Fred MacAulay (2nd episode)
Linda Smith (joint with Tony Hawks and Derek Nimmo)
Rick Wakeman (2nd episode)
Russell Kane

Television:
Mariella Frostrup
Ann Bryson
Neil Mullarkey
Jo Brand
Ted Robbins
John Sergeant (won first TWO episodes)
Brian Sewell (2nd episode, joint with John Sergeant)
Isla Blair (2nd episode)
Pam Ayres (2nd episode, joint with Wendy Richard)
Michael Cashman (2nd episode)

So twenty radio panellists (at least - there are always the missing episodes from Series 1 and 3, which contain a few debuts or even lone appearances), ten television panellists. Only thirty of the literally hundreds of people who have been on "Just a Minute" over the years have opened their careers with a win, and of those, only Derek Nimmo, Tim Rice, Gyles Brandreth, Jenny Eclair, and Linda Smith made regular appearances for an appreciable length of time (far too short a length of time in Linda's case, of course - but how funny she was when she was on the programme...).

-Matthew.

--- In mailto:just-a-minute%40..., "delmelza" <delmelza@...> wrote:

>
> Do you have Statistics on

New Players of the Game winning their first time out? ( first or second show recording. ) Just curious since it happened this series. Miriam

>