In America there is a programme called Deal or No Deal that obeys the rules of Channel 4’s Deal or No Deal, but everything else about it is unrecognisable. Its host, Howie Mandel, has too little hair rather than, as with Noel Edmonds, too much. Its boxes are opened by blondes in evening dresses, not by a congregation of dowdy contestants. It appears to hail from Las Vegas, not a flooring showroom.

If they had wanted, Channel 4 could have done something different with Countdown. Yesterday afternoon’s show – the first post-Vorderman edition – demonstrated that it was taking the road more travelled.

Oh, there was a new set, but although it looked a bit bigger and a bit less pastel Vegas, it was not. And there was a new host, Jeff Stelling, decades younger than his predecessor, Des O’Connor, but, to be honest, not looking it. Stelling is Sky Sport’s unflappable Saturday afternoon anchorman. Countdown, a word and numbers panel game that was Channel 4’s first programme in 1982, was not the show to start him flapping now.

Stelling doesn’t possess the lazy larkiness of Richard Whiteley, whose death sent the show into ratings decline, but his corny wit should suffice. “Just the one i,” he said of a particular letter draw. “Can’t see a lot with that.”

His co-host, a 22-year-old Oxford graduate called Rachel Riley, told him that the night before she had dreamt of George Clooney. She can dream on. She’s stuck with spelling with Stelling. It is she, of course, who needs to be the star of this show.

Her predecessor, Carol Vorderman, who jibbed at a proposed 90 per cent pay cut and resigned, became a celebrity through her ability not to let sums worry her pretty little head. Riley is every bit as pretty and can also do the maths.

Admittedly, she once added when she should have subtracted yesterday, but on this outing the rumours that Channel 4 had landed itself an Anne Aston – the goofily innumerate blonde trusted with simple addings up on ITV’s long-forgotten The Golden Shot – are unfounded.

“Rest assured,” promised Stelling, “this is the same Countdown you have grown to love over the years.” And rest is the word. From the mildly taxing anagrams that introduced the ad breaks to Andrew Sachs in Dictionary Corner doing a musical hall monologue (no questions, naturally, about granddaughters), Countdown remains as much an aid to afternoon kips as In the Night Garden is to infant bedtimes. Only the contestants seem fully awake.

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