Alex Dusek these days.

Hello and welcome to Part Three of my chat with Alex Dusek. When we left off last week, I’d just asked Alex if, after his big win on Million Dollar Minute in 2014, he “retired” from being a game show contestant…

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AD: I did, I did. Afterwards, I had this strong feeling that I’d been lucky enough to do something really amazing and that I’d climbed that mountain and that I doing it again would be too much; other people should have their shots. That’s how I felt.

There was a desire to, if a good show came along, to go on it purely because our lives are short and you don’t get these opportunities often. And if an interesting thing comes on, you want to test yourself, you want to participate. So I would see things like Mastermind, and think, ‘should I apply?’ Or even The Chase – that can be quite thrilling at the end, but that’s more of a team-based one. I remember talking to Andrew Skarbek, the big winner of Million Dollar Minute, because we caught up a few times. And he was surprised when I said that I didn’t want to do any more. But later on, he came to the same conclusion; that he’d had such a great experience that nothing could really top it.

But from the other point of view, if you’ve got this speed or knowledge, it’s sort of a waste if you don’t use it. So I do try and keep myself sharp, still watch a lot of docos, but I certainly couldn’t sustain the same sort of training that I was doing at that time. And then you look at the pros on The Chase, like Brydon Coverdale, and the amount of stuff they’d be reading daily to keep sharp, it would just be so much! But I’m sort of on the lookout; in the next five, 10, 20 years, if something came along, I’d love to revisit; to see if I’m still as sharp as before and to have that thrill again.

But I was certainly very happy to have that opportunity and just to be in retirement.

But to touch back on what you were saying about relationships, I did feel sometimes that people would look at you a little bit differently; “Oh Alex, he won that, he’s really smart” or “he’s really fast” or that sort of thing. It does change your “brand” a little bit. And some people might be a little bit envious. I remember a few people saying, “oh, was it luck?”

People like to ask about it because it was such an unusual thing and it’s really an exciting thing to learn how the show works. Like that you record five episodes a day and how long it takes; like two hours to record a half an hour. So little insights like that, people really love to know about.

And as a guy who was 27 who had won that money, that was a rare thing, but I wasn’t really working at the time. So it didn’t really compensate for not having a job and not being like a real solid citizen.

SH: What do you mean by that? “It didn’t compensate for not being a solid citizen”? Can you explain that?

AD: Yeah, so if I was going on a date at the time and I was saying, “I’ve studied film, I’m doing a bit of part-time work”, I think people know you’re not really going somewhere solid; your career’s a bit shaky. But then if you say, “I’ve won this money on a game show”, that’s quite cool to hear, but it didn’t really help people to look at me that favourably. I think it was like, “oh, he’s a bit lost, he’s a bit sort of unsure of where his future’s going” sort of thing, which makes sense.

SH: Yeah, that’s interesting. Can I ask you – and there’s no obligation to answer this question if it makes you uncomfortable – but I am curious to know what you did with the $307,000.

AD: Yeah, so being a very cautious person, when I won it, I put it in a term deposit account. I actually didn’t want to think about what to do because I’d just started this film degree and I was really looking to get somewhere and to have a solid footing, career-wise. I really just wanted to knuckle down to some work and so I thought ‘I’ll just put this aside, and I’ll think about this in a year’.

SH: Really? That’s very self-disciplined.

AD: Yeah, well, thank you. But I’ve got a lot of friends and family who lived life in a more fun way. So I remember thinking like, “oh, what could have I done if I was a bit more outgoing?” But yeah, I put most of it into the purchase of a unit four years later, in 2018. And I know that I bought a second-hand car and I know that I bought my parents a new Mac computer. I don’t really know what like a third of it went to, but most of it was into that unit deposit. I think 200 of the 300 was into that. And then I did put money away for that film idea, but that didn’t come to fruition. I remember there was one cool thing. We did a trivia every Tuesday in Brighton at the Marine Hotel. And we’ve been doing that pretty regularly.

And it was around the same time that I was on the show. So one week I ordered champagne bottles for all the tables just randomly. That was really cool. You don’t get to do that very often, but it was a nice way celebrate!

SH: Yeah. That’s very nice. And after your win, did you keep going to the trivia nights? And how did they view you?

AD: I did. Yeah. I didn’t want to change the routine and yeah, it was nice. You got a few pats on the back and people looked at you with a smile – yeah, it was good.

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And on that positive note, we’ll leave it there for this week. Join us here next Tuesday for the penultimate instalment, where Alex and I discuss the things his big win has enabled him to do, that he wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise… See you then!