A Swindon shop owner returned to our screens to face another round of Countdown.

Bert’s Books boss Alex Call appeared in his second episode of the long-running Channel 4 quiz show on Wednesday afternoon after triumphing in Tuesday’s edition.

The Old Town entrepreneur spoke to presenter Colin Murray about the famous faces who have popped into the Hoopers Place store for book signings, such as Dame Jackie Collins and Sir Roger Moore, while competitor Lorraine Graham revealed that she would like to be an author one day.

In the first round, both contestants came up with the same seven-letter word – Coasted - and then created eight-letter words Migrated (Alex) and Dreaming (Lorraine) out of the same batch of mixed consonants and vowels, though Lorraine was penalised for mistakenly claiming that her word had nine letters.

Some quick number crunching followed as they each calculated the exact required total of 689 via different methods.

The competition continued with eight-letter words from Lorraine (Propane) and Alex (Planter) keeping them neck and neck as they then thought of the same seven-letter word – Forages – once again.

The second mathematical head-scratcher tasked them with calculating 771 using the numbers provided. Lorraine summed up to 750 but Alex got the total exactly right and took the lead.

In the third round of anagrams, Alex secured his victory with the eight-letter word Bruisers as Lorraine received the bad news that her seven-letter suggestion of Burries was not in the dictionary – and neither was the seven-letter Pungier, though Alex’s six-letter answer of Griped was correct.

Another exact answer of 489 for Alex in the next numbers round kept him ahead as Lorraine got close with 490.

In the home stretch, with Alex now at 73 points and Lorraine at 31, they each made words of four and seven letters, respectively, then a five from Alex and another incorrect guess from Lorraine widened the gap between their scores.

The last letters round saw Alex give the answer Storied - fitting for a bookseller - and Lorraine hoping in vain that Sodgier was a word.

In the last numbers game of reaching 911, Alex got to 909 and Lorraine gave up, and the Countdown Conundrum of Diaphragm stumped them both.

Alex won for the second time in a row with a score of more than 100 points.

The show is now taking a break for the 2024 Paralympic Games, so we will have to wait two weeks to see how he does in his third go.