Before his Big Win, Alex was a supermarket shelf stacker… then, at the time of his Big Win, he was a film student (and, well, also a Game Show Winner, obvs)… But how about now?

Hello, and welcome to the second part of my interview with 2014 game show winner Alex Dusek, where it’s time to get down to business…

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SH: So just back to your winning $307,000 on Million Dollar Minute in 2014… How did it change your life between then and now? And how would your life have been if you hadn’t won it?

AD: Very good question.

SH: Thank you.

AD: To answer the first part, it changed my life in a big way because I’d just started that film degree in 2014, and I was a 27-year-old still trying to figure out what I was going to do in the world. It’s pretty crazy, in retrospect, that it came along. And I’d be interested to see what other people think about this, but it really just felt like the planets aligned. Like one minute you applied and a few weeks later, you’re in a green room with all these other contestants. And it’s very real. Once you’re there with other people who are pretty similar, you think, “Oh, am I going to be that good? Am I going to get on there and just find the bar’s quite high and I’m not going to win anything?” But winning gives you that sense of accomplishment. It’s something that I look back on and you’re able to translate a skill that you have that’s a bit of a niche thing into something really tangible and really cool.

I’ve got the episode saved somewhere. So that’ll be great to look back on at certain points in life. I think it gave me that confidence that I had done something because I was only 27. And I think at that age, you want to be into a career. And I was not really settled and hadn’t really worked a lot… So it gives you that financial stability that I didn’t really have.

And I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing that you get to do. And it’s a real privilege to do it; you would just never be able to do that in other circumstances. And obviously there’s prize money on the line.

There are other things people get to do, getting married, having kids, like really momentous things, but on a purely personal level, it’s an amazing thing to get to do, to compete against others and to have that elation, that fun! It’s all on the line and in a minute, it’s all going to be determined whether it’s going to be good or bad, or up or down. It’s a touchstone that I look back on and think, ‘Gee, I was really lucky to get to do that!’

And then second part of the question, how would my life have been if I hadn’t gone on the show? I have thought about that. And I think my life would have been just as fine. You would just never know, like you would never know that you could’ve done it or that you would have won…

I was always a bit of a shy person. So I felt uncomfortable a bit with all the people asking about it because it’s an awkward thing to talk about when you’ve won something. So that part is a bit tricky, but my dad always really liked it and he would like to talk about it.

SH: That leads into my next question, which was how did it impact on your relationships, both at the time, and in the intervening years?

AD: I was certainly glad to talk about it because I love game shows, and people were generally very interested. I’d love to talk about the mechanics of how it worked. And people were so surprised when you would tell them there’s no studio audience! And was that the same for you?

SH: No, there was a studio audience, but I remember when I interviewed you 11 years ago, I asked you about that because Million Dollar Minute did a very convincing job of making you believe there’s a studio audience. Of course, it’s all recorded. Have you done any more quizzing since Million Dollar Minute? I remember that you did loads of study for it, lots of newspaper quizzes and I think you got your family to drill you on stuff before you went on. But after your Big Win, did you “retire”?

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So… DID Alex retire? WAS that the end of his game show career? Or did he go on loads more shows after Million Dollar Minute? To find out, join us back here next Tuesday afternoon. See you then!