press releases

Cassons' Quiz Queen's TV triumph

30 April 2010

A business support manager from Burnley scooped £5,285 on a TV game show on Thursday (29th April).
Joanne Halsall, who works at the Haslingden office of award-winning accountancy firm Cassons, won the cash on ITV’s popular daytime quiz Divided. The show, which is hosted by GMTV’s Andrew Castle, sees three strangers joining forces to answer general knowledge questions to win a cash prize. The clock is ticking and for each second that goes by without an agreed answer, money is lost.

Quiz veteran Joanne, 43, who has appeared on a variety of TV game shows including In It To Win It, Codex, Pointless, One Versus 100 and Eggheads, with her colleagues from Cassons, explained: “At the end of the game we had a pot of money, about £27,000, which was divided into three uneven lots – one large, one medium and one small – and the three of us had to decide unanimously who got which share.

“Each player was given 15 seconds to state their case for which share they felt they deserved, based on how well they have performed in the game.
“It’s a horrible game because most people tend to say they want the top prize even if they know they haven’t played the best. I got to pick first and I chose the medium pot because I felt the other girl answered a couple more questions right than me but the other player also wanted the large pot, even though he was the weakest player.”

If a team fails to reach a decision, the money starts counting down, until they can agree. If they fail to reach a decision before the time is up, they lose all the money. In the end, the weakest player agreed to take the smallest share – but, by that time, the pot had gone down to £17,000.

Avid Clarets fan Joanne has yet to decide how she will spend her winnings. “It’s sitting in the bank at the moment, but I think I will use some of it to go and visit my son Paul, who lives in Germany.”