Who took home the coveted Only Connect trophy?

By James Hibbs

Published: Monday, 29 January 2024 at 20:30 PM

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*Warning – Contains spoilers for the Only Connect season 19 final*

The 19th season of notoriously difficult gameshow Only Connect has come to an end, with the winning team being crowned by Victoria Coren Mitchell in tonight’s tense final.

There was only one point between the two teams of three taking part in the final – the Thrifters, made up of Will Chadwick, Sam Haywood and Jack Karimi, and the Also Rans, made up of Harry Heath, Dan Afshar and Claire Barrow.

In the end, it was the Thrifters who came out on top with 19 points, with Coren Mitchell presenting them with the trophy at the end of the episode.

Before she announced the result, Coren Mitchell said: “There’s a one point difference. That means you all deserve this trophy, you’ve all been brilliant.”

This season of Only Connect first started airing on 17th July 2023, with 28 episodes and 4 specials having taken place since then.

The series sees contestants trying to find connections between seemingly unrelated clues. As Coren Mitchell noted in the final, this is the first season since the Covid pandemic where there haven’t been any restrictions in place throughout the entire run.

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Challenges seen in the final included linking Prime Ministers with prime numbers and linking pairs of words with inverted hand signals.

The final aired on BBC Two, as the show typically does, in between Mastermind, hosted by Clive Myrie, and University Challenge, now hosted by Amol Rajan after Jeremy Paxman stepped down in the middle of 2023.

Coren Mitchell has hosted Only Connect since it first began airing in 2008.