Deal Or No Deal is mental. A game of chance turned into the closest thing Britain has got to a cult. In Noel Edmonds we’ve got a man who directs the people with quacky systems and a belief in higher forces. Essentially it fulfils Channel 4′s religious output. Such is the fervour of which people love the show, they’ve melted an entire website until it was turned into a blessed ointment.

People are so nutty over the show that some people have compiled a dictionary of Noel’s phrases. That’s innocent enough… but what about the people who track the repetition of my shoes, trousers and shirts, just in case it gives a clue to the unlocking of the supposed secret to the show.

Jon Ronson wrote (a very good) piece on the show where Noel chirruped: “I’m delighted people are reading so much into it. I want to be popular. I want people to like me. Not long ago I talked to someone in the audience and she went to pieces. Just because I was talking to her!”

The chance to touch the hem of His garment has seen record numbers applying to be on the show. Yep, the Deal Or No Deal website crashed thanks to the wave of people trying to point at red boxes.

The Daily Star reports that the rush happened when host Noel Edmonds announced that members of the public can now apply online to appear on the programme and after almost 4.5 million hits, the internet itself cried with the pressure.

“So far, nearly 113,000 people have registered online,” series producer Julie Dolphin said. “Even after well over 1,000 shows, a record-breaking number of people want to be part of this experience.”

Check that. Not people wanting to ‘take part’, but rather, be part of an ‘experience’.

It’s brilliantly weird and wonderful that Deal Or No Deal provokes British minds into thinking so bizarrely. It makes normally sane people act like those gibbering Christians you see from Baptist churches in America, speaking in tongues and putting snakes around their necks… of course, this being Britain, we do it a little more reservedly.

And so, Deal Or No Deal continues apace and while Noel negotiates his contract, we have to wonder if the show could continue without him. It seems his cosmic wish has been granted and people want to believe… that people want in.

Fascinating.