Student Tim Robinson has notched up an amazing seven successive victories on the TV show he has watched since he was a child.

Millions of Channel 4 viewers saw the 26-year-old win a quarter-final place on Countdown, the show that has students glued to the screen every day of the week.

However, it was not his lifelong addiction to the words and numbers game that inspired him to enter.

He wanted to raise awareness about colitis, the condition he has suffered from for five years, and its associated illness Crohn's disease.

Tim said: "To be honest, I just wanted to win once which I think everyone does. Then I won twice more and it all became a bit of a haze because three shows were recorded one evening and five the next day and the adrenaline was flowing."

Sussex University student Tim, of Hedge End, Barnham, near Bognor, decided to go for it when he began to recover from a serious bout of illness.

He took up skydiving and persuaded 15 fellow students to take the plunge to raise £900 for research into colitis before applying to Countdown.

Viewers heard host Richard Whiteley explain how Tim wanted to raise the profile of colitis and Crohn's and that he was currently in remission.

Tim, a former pupil of Chichester High School for Boys, was first taken seriously ill with the bowel disease in 1996.

He said: "I was very ill. I was housebound with severe pain and I lost three stone.

"Remission is a bit of a misnomer because the illness is always going to be there but I am trying to lead as high a quality of life as possible.

"It's not a particularly rare disease as one in 500 people is affected by it but until the Fifties it could be fatal."

Tim said he did not mind talking about his illness during Countdown, which was first screened in 1982 and made stars of Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman.

Tim scored highly on the numbers game during the show but says his maths is as good now as it was when he was seven and first watched Countdown.

Tim, who plays football for the Bognor-based Ambassadors club, is now looking forward to returning to university in September to resume his studies for a MA in philosophy.

Before that, he will be returning to Leeds, where Countdown is recorded, to try to become the overall champion.