First Night: Countdown, Channel Four

When Carol Vorderman was given 48 hours to sign a new Countdown contract and accept a 90 per cent pay-cut, it wouldn't have taken long for the Mensa-brainbox to do the maths and calculate that Channel 4 was having a laugh. Vorderman posted her final anagram in December and yesterday afternoon her replacement – a 22-year-old Oxford graduate with Gwyneth Paltrow looks, name of Rachel Riley – made her debut in one of the world's longest-running TV quiz shows.

Riley was joined by fellow debutant Jeff Stelling (he takes over from Des O'Connor). Stelling was presumably deemed safe with numbers and words after long years intoning football scores and deciphering Phil Thompson's manic match reports on Sky Sports. Stelling began self-deprecatingly ("You're probably thinking 'who the heck am I?"), but then it can't be easy knowing that your job had been offered to other people first. Alexander Armstrong and Rory Bremner had both been approached – Armstrong only pulling out at the last moment.

Stelling was not altogether confident enough to let go of his Sky Sports persona and cut the soccer chat. Richard Whiteley is unlikely to have discussed a contestant's lifelong support for Plymouth Argyle, although the two men share a taste for a bad pun – Stelling got off to a groan-inducing start with "it's only got one 'I' – you can't see much with that".

Otherwise, apart from a "sparkling new set", it was business as usual, with Rachel Riley, a tad stiff in a figure-hugging blue number and dominatrix heels, stacking up the vowels and consonants. She lobbed a couple of easy maths questions at James (a financial analyst; I didn't fancy his chances of getting the numbers to add up) and David, who has an MA in political theory. Even I got the first one after 15 seconds, only to notice that James and David had finished the sums and were looking smug.

The anagrams were tougher, but I admire the chaps' sangfroid after Rachel posted the letters S-E-X. I actively began to worry for them when an F and a U also appeared.

Meanwhile, sitting in Dictionary Corner dressed in a Jackanory-type chunky brown knit, was none other than Andrew Sachs who seemed pretty miffed when Stelling introduced him with reference to Manuel, before getting stuck into a comedy monologue from the 1920s. This was the half-time entertainment.

Countdown has been running for 26 years and will probably run for another 26. There is something a bit glazed about Stelling, but he seems nice enough. And that surely is a large part of the show's appeal. Once Stelling had introduced himself, Rachel and the "sparkling new set" he cosied-up to viewers: "Rest assured, this is the same old Countdown you have come to love."