Thursday 24 June saw Newport Girls' School from Shropshire become The Times Spelling Bee Champions 2010!

Heats began across the country in March, with over 1000 schools registering, and 100 Semi Finals whittled it down to 10 for the final spell-off at the Institute of Education in London.

Teams travelled from across the country to walk up the yellow and black carpet and down into the Spelling Bee lair where they had the opportunity to practise one last time before entering into the Logan Hall; dimmed lights and atmospheric music aplenty!

Dick & Dom were there to warm up the crowd (as if they weren't excited enough already...) and banners flew throughout the hall for the Queen Bees, The Incredibles, The Bees Knees.....you name it.

After an introduction from James Harding and messages of good luck from Jon Snow, the GMTV presenters and others, it was time for the serious stuff to begin...

And off they went.

Say it, spell it, say it....

Eczema, pneumatic, secateurs, dilettante, incandescent...The level of spelling was extraordinary but after the first round there was only one man (girl) standing and the points were totted up for the teams so that they knew how to approach the quick fire round...

Teams could choose from easy, medium and difficult words, 1 point for easy, 2 for medium, 3 for difficult.  Needless to say difficult was the word group of choice and the first team took to the podium.

After an incredibly nerve-racking and tense 20 minutes (each team had 2 minutes to spell as many words correctly as they could) it was time to announce the results, and as the final two teams stood trembling on stage awaiting their fate, it was Newport Girls' School who heard those magical words, 'And in second place is Culcheth High School'.  They'd done it.

There were tears of joy, pictures with Dick &Dom, the presentation of laptops, trophies, dictionaries - the cheers were deafening!

Once the winning team had been interviewed and photographed to within an inch of their lives they were whisked off to a nearby boutique hotel where they had a little time for it all to sink in before once again being taxied off to the Rainforest Café where we are assured much fun was had with a special announcement being made and more cheers all round.

It didn't end there and the following morning saw the team on the BBC Breakfast sofa with Susannah and Charlie and their faces on the front page of The Times.

At lunchtime they were free to head back to Shropshire - I almost left my phone with them as they'd taken it off me to play the Spelling Bee app.  Something tells me there might be some training involved for 2011.....

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