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You don't have to win to be a winner. On Tuesday 3rd June, millions of viewers saw Connie lose to Jonathon Coles, a man on his way to becoming an "octochamp" (in Countdown parlance) and booking his way into the finals for the elite competitors over the past six months. Eventually Jonathon bowed only in the semi-finalsto the eventual winner.  She gave him a tight race, and actually spotted the conundrum "medicinal" before he did, but this does not explain why she suddenly found herself the centre of unexpected limelight.
She was courted by Cumbrian Newspapers photographer, John Story, barely disguising his glee at having scooped Egremont Today on our own premises, and to be fair to our competitor, he took some lovely pictures of Connie surrounded by the goodies she had picked up from Yorkshire Television studios in Leeds, to be published in consecutive editions of The News & Star. As soon as the programme finished, the phone started ringing, with admirers declaring that she was brilliant and that she ought to have won, and indeed would have done so if the rules of Countdown were changed, to give due credit for making people laugh, instead of merely making long words out of a medley of letters and getting sums right. She certainly put Egremont on the map by telling viewers that it was the "land of the gurners" and giving a demonstration. The studio audience saw Carol, Susie and Des trying to emulate her, but these attempts were understandably edited out of the broadcast.
To quote Des O'Connor, "Connie, you are fun," and that was the way she came over to viewers who had not even known of the existence of Egremont. Countdown's Associate Producer, Kate Horton, sent an email to tell her: "I have just had a call from a viewer in Devon saying how much she enjoyed watching Connie this afternoon. She told me she’d had a really bad week so far and watching Connie put a smile on her face and made her giggle. She wanted to pass on her thanks for brightening her day. See Connie – you really are a ray of sunshine!"
The next day she had another message from Kate: "We record around 250 games every year and only once in a while we get a star like Connie who makes our day all the more enjoyable."
Connie thoroughly enjoyed her visit to the studio, meeting not only Des, Carol and Susie but Roylety itself in the shape of studio guest, Ricky Tomlinson, considerably reduced in girth after heart surgery, but no less fit or sharp witted for that.
Her husband Peter, Egremont Today's editor, suffered some embarrassment. Discovering that she had never been to America, Des O'Connor virtually ordered him to take her there to celebrate their Golden Wedding anniversary later this summer. Still more alarmingly, Carol suggested Las Vegas as a suitable holiday resort. Connie is considering all her options. Mercifully, she did not complain on air, as she sometimes does in Peter’s hearing, about having her home "turned into an annexe to the bloody printshop."