The owner of a popular Swindon bookstore has appeared on Countdown.

Alex Call of Bert’s Books in Old Town swapped dealing with printed pages to letters and numbers on squares as tried his hand at the popular daytime letters and numbers challenge show.

Appearing on the Tuesday, August 27 episode, Alex faced tough competition against reigning champion Jill Taylor, who had won two previous episodes.

Host Colin Murray, wearing a sparkly jumper and talking about rock, paper, scissors, introduced Alex at the start of the episode and quizzed him on starting his own business.

“I was going to take a year out and do nothing,” Alex said, “But within a week, I started the business, I got bored.”

He added: “Things went really well during lockdown, and I opened the shop in 2022, which was quite scary but a lot of fun.”

After the initial chit-chat, it was down to business, with Alex getting two good six-letter words to start – 'Footer' and 'Wasted' – but he was matched by Jill in both rounds, as well as the following numbers round when both successfully got 149.

Fittingly the first teatime teaser was 'Even Races', which is exactly what it was at this point.

But Alex’s day-to-day experience of dealing exclusively with words started to show when he trumped her four-word offering of ‘mark’ with ‘market’.

He then further took the lead with a seven-letter ‘politer’ against Jill’s ‘police’ – although he did miss the eight-letter 'compiler' which led to a polite scolding from Colin.

Both then finished 1 away in the next numbers round leaving it up to maths whiz Rachel Riley to solve the puzzle.

At this point, Alex was on 42 points, with Jill on 26.

The next two letters round and numbers round were evenly matched, with Alex on 56 and Jill on 43 heading into the second teatime teaser.

(Image: Channel 4) After the break, Colin reintroduced proceedings and said: “We’re back with book-owning challenger Alex Call looking to close the book on our reigning champion Jill.”

And that’s exactly what he did, booking himself an appearance on the Wednesday episode of Countdown by extending his lead as the last four letters round and final numbers round took place.

The conundrum was arbitrary, as Alex had already won the episode the teapot, with neither contestant guessing ‘fictional’.

Colin ended the episode with: "If only someone here owned a bookshop".