A YORK sixth former has been chalking up success on TV’s Countdown - just as he awaits his results in tomorrow’s A-levels.

Stephen Mellor, 18, from Elvington, who is a student at Fulford School, has won three rounds so far this week in the pre-recorded Channel 4 quiz programme, which involves word and number tasks.

He beat a top player, Colin Greenwood, by 81 points to 78, on Monday’s programme.

He then triumphed by winning 94-24 against Julie Didlick on Tuesday’s episode (August 13), and then he went on to keep up his winning streak on today’s show, which he won by 78-71.

His ‘conundrum’ word was Establish from letters forming Heartbliss and he beat the ‘dictionary corner’ who came up with only a seven-letter word, Tailors, when the others on the panel only had a six-letter word.

He answered letter rounds with words such as Nagger, Unhorse, Dancer and Mikados.

His success came as no massive surprise to delighted teachers at his school, where he is expected to go tomorrow - Thursday, August 15 - to find out how he did in his A-levels and where staff are confident he should do well.

Tim Morris, is the director of the sixth form at Fulford.

Mr Morris told The Press: “It’s fantastic to see Stephen doing so well on Countdown.

“But he is an absolutely brilliant student of maths, and it is no major surprise for him to have done so well in numerical questions.”

He said Stephen was hoping to study computer sciences and maths at university, subject to him getting the necessary A-level results today in maths, further maths and physics, and he had received straight As in his earlier AS levels.

Countdown was the first programme to be aired on Channel 4, and 80 series have been broadcast since its debut in 1982.

It is now one of the longest-running game shows in the world.

There have been more than 7,000 episodes broadcast so far.