Bradley Horrocks

Bradley Horrocks Octochamp Statistics
Final position	Runner-up
Seeding	2
Points total	864
Conundrums solved	5

Bradley Horrocks in Series 77.

Bradley Horrocks solving the conundrum in Episode 6526.

Bradley Horrocks was an octochamp in and the runner-up of Series 77, and the runner-up of Championship of Champions XV. He was a maths student from Bolton. He is also an Apterite who has held the No. 1 position in the Pro Ranks. [1]

Prior to his début as a contestant, Horrocks had appeared on Countdown during the previous series as the audience member who unscrambled the conundrum COOLCIDER on 23 February 2017.

Appearances on the programme

Heat games

Bra, as he is also known on Apterous, made his début on 22 November 2017 in the champion's chair, where he comfortably outran Liam Dwek with a century. Another seven wins followed, including six centuries and a score in the 80s. He amassed 864 points during his run, finishing his unbeaten streak during the penultimate week of preliminaries in Series 77 to qualify as the No. 2 seed for the finals as well as the eighth and final octochamp of the series.

Finals

Eleven days later, Horrocks returned for the finals stage, where he first prevailed over No. 7-ranked James Kennedy in a very close quarter-final, sealing victory on a crucial conundrum. Barely a week after that, he returned for the semi-finals where he faced the "strong 6 small" man John Cowen. In spite of this, he managed to defeat him through several letters rounds by spotting words such as OVERFIT, RETINOID and SIDEWAY. Finally, the day after his semi-final, he reached the grand final of Series 77, where he took on No. 1 seed Tom Chafer-Cook. In the first round, he beat Chafer-Cook with the five-letter GREED after the latter had a word disallowed, and he kept up tenaciously with the top seed in all numbers and most letters rounds thereafter to force a crucial conundrum with the score standing 100 – 91 in Chafer-Cook's favour. However, neither contestant was able to spot that RILEYISMS unscrambled to MISSILERY within the allotted time, meaning that Horrocks finally fell at the final hurdle but still finished as runner-up of a very strong series.

Championship of Champions XV

Horrocks returned to Countdown over a year later in January 2019 to participate in the Championship of Champions XV. In the seventh match of the preliminary round, he took on fellow series runner-up Andrew Macleod. A high-scoring contest saw Horrocks take the game 128 – 104 to set up a quarter-final rematch with John Cowen. In the quarter-final match, they played a close run game, but Horrocks ran 3 points ahead and finished with 99 points to Cowen's 96 after both players gave incorrect answers to the crucial conundrum MIHIBALLS. In the semi-finals, he played a rematch of his grand final in Series 77 against Tom Chafer-Cook. After falling 7 points behind in round 1, he turned it around with victory in the third numbers round and won the final letters round with ATHEROMA. Both solved the final numbers round, giving victory to Horrocks despite Chafer-Cook solving the conundrum (to lose by 1 point!). He played Zarte Siempre in the grand final, but his opponent lead all the way, spotting HEDARIM in round 1 and extending his lead with a 3 large selection and DIADEM in round 13 to build an unassailable lead. Horrocks did get one last consolation, solving a 6 small with use of the 13 times table.

Catsdown

On 12 August 2022, Horrocks appeared on Series 23 of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, helping out Jamali Maddix and Joe Wilkinson. He also became the first non-celebrity contestant since Mark Murray in more than 5.5 years to appear on that version of the show.

Co-events

Horrocks competed in the 2018 and 2019 FOCAL finals, finishing in 6th place in 2018 then losing on a tiebreak conundrum against Callum Todd in the 2019 final. He has made eight co-event finals, winning the 2020 virtual edition of CO-MSO before finally winning his first face-to-face tournament, Co-Blackpool 2021.

Preceded by Moose Rosser

Series runner-up Series 77

Followed by Philip Aston

Preceded by Dan McColm

Champion of Champions runner-up Championship of Champions XV

Followed by James Haughton

Episodes

#	Date	Type	Contestant 1	Score	Contestant 2	Presenters				Guest	Lex	Max
6715	22/11/2017	P	Bradley Horrocks	109 – 40	Liam Dwek	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Gyles Brandreth	Susie Dent	124
6716	23/11/2017	P	Bradley Horrocks	113 – 57	Peter Buckley	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dr Linda Papadopoulos	Susie Dent	122
6717	27/11/2017	P	Bradley Horrocks	116 – 49	Alenka Butkovicova	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dr Linda Papadopoulos	Susie Dent	124
6718	28/11/2017	P	Bradley Horrocks	82 – 70	Laurie Dyer	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dr Linda Papadopoulos	Susie Dent	124
6719	29/11/2017	P	Bradley Horrocks	102 – 68	Steve Harris	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dr Linda Papadopoulos	Susie Dent	133
6720	30/11/2017	P	Bradley Horrocks	122 – 42	Leah Holroyd	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dr Linda Papadopoulos	Susie Dent	164
6721	1/12/2017	P	Bradley Horrocks	111 – 37	Jason Hill	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Richard Madeley	Susie Dent	144
6722	4/12/2017	P	Bradley Horrocks	109 – 40	Luke O'Reilly	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Richard Madeley	Susie Dent	147
6731	15/12/2017	QF	Bradley Horrocks	86 – 80	James Kennedy	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Paul Zenon	Susie Dent	121
6735	21/12/2017	SF	Bradley Horrocks	95 – 83	John Cowen	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Rufus Hound	Susie Dent	134
6736	22/12/2017	GF	Tom Chafer-Cook	100 – 91	Bradley Horrocks	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Rufus Hound	Susie Dent	122
6986	10/01/2019	CP	Bradley Horrocks	128 – 104	Andrew Macleod	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dr Linda Papadopoulos	Susie Dent	133
6989	15/01/2019	CQF	John Cowen	96 – 99	Bradley Horrocks	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Dr Linda Papadopoulos	Susie Dent	136
6993	21/01/2019	CSF	Bradley Horrocks	111 – 110	Tom Chafer-Cook	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Jon Culshaw	Susie Dent	128
6994	22/01/2019	CGF	Zarte Siempre	116 – 83	Bradley Horrocks	Nick Hewer	Rachel Riley				Lucy Summers	Jon Culshaw	Susie Dent	123
Cats145	12/08/2022	S	Jamali Maddix, Bradley Horrocks & Joe Wilkinson	73* – 56*	Jon Richardson & Jo Brand	Jimmy Carr	Rachel Riley					Rachel Parris	Susie Dent	75

* Includes 5 points from a bonus game.

See Also

• Bradley's profile here.