tonights, QUIZ

It is not a Million to one Chance I was on the Show , I only rang twice , Half of his associates had been on the show also , I think he himself had previously been on the show but did not get into the seat ,Mark  from the Chase was also on the show before he was Famous I think he was on it Twice Seat once , I bloke I know from the Poker forum was also on the show , He was also on the chase last week ....

Sorry I see that was stated previously

Here he is …..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehL1MOVKq48

I did not get into the Seat despite knowing the answer to one question and entering the Correct letters in about 3 seconds ,It was regarding the order of names of the Trumpton Firemen ...

One Lady got in Correct in 10 seconds ...

Unfortunately after entering the Letters I did not press the Green button ,When I looked down and realised it was too late ....

If I had got the same questions as her I would have got 16 k , For some reason at the time

I Could not remember Delia smith was associated with NORWICH FC

WHERE ARE YOU

There is a Documentary regarding the Fraud was very interesting that is on you tube some where

enjoyed that

Best thing I've seen on TV for a while. Very good.

Watched on Plus 1 , The Brother went through all that and 50/50s a question before Phoning his dad

You would ring the person Hope they know it ,then have Evens a 3-1 chance on the 125 question ..If

u Want to gamble  .. If they are unsure when u ring them u 50/50 their answer to see if its left

U aint losing at 32 anyway ..

Fooking Clueless

my problems ,queries with this are
the major was rightly or wrongly found guilty so its on the record,and appartently they were contacted,revisited the studio etc  during the making of this show, but no one including Tarrant no,s how they did it,they might no or think they no how they transmitted answers coughing etc,
so why hasn't the major sold his story of how it worked
2nd I read the torygraphs version of what took place,they say,suggest that 2 people in the fastest finger seats a lady and gent had sussed the coughing scam early on and were then watching it unfold, think they appeared in court, and on the last question which non of the so called guilty new the answer, the lady in same area whispered the answer to the cougher and he reacted by coughing at the answer he was given when the major read it out, my problem with this is,having got this far with half a million in the bank,why would the cougher risk 400 and odd grand on the word of a stranger ,on the most difficult question makes no sense at all,the major of course wouldn't have known it wasn't the coughers answer bu a 3rd hands answer
IMO to risk losing nearly half a million, we now no they didn't have it lose ,filthy rich etc,they had to no that answer was 110% correct ,which either means an inside job or a 4th/5th person outside of studio some how relaying the answer,s

I am wondering if there was. Fraud committed by the show. Did they not get money from people ringing up to be on the show. Has this not been investigated?

Where's terry mccann when you need him

as they don't no for certain a conspiracy took place,and if it did they don't no how it was done,seems the drama isn't really telling us anything, if its an inside job its itv,show makers in the dock

hes cheating

Guilty as charged but maybe so were the producers of the show. Cheating is cheating and theft is theft. 1 million pounds or the cost for a phone call!

cough !

If the wife had been in the seat they would have got away it 

in the end greed done them . the googol question reaction is just silly ..

Very entertaining never the less

wife was on wife swap later

handy

if he had taken £250k i suspect celador wouldnt have pursued it, greed cost them

Yep ..

still doesn't answer the 64 million dollar to question so to speak
why did the cougher take a £460,000  punt on the word of a complete stranger sat next to him,they must have had a fall back plan of a sniff,sneeze,2 coughs etc of when to take the money if they didn't no the answer,
they had to no them last 3 answers 110% correct before coughing,which suggests they new answers and questions beforehand,inside job or maybe they were innocent,
the theoris doing the media rounds don't add up

I didn't follow this story very closely at the time but some interesting questions raised on here.

Really enjoying the TV series.  They seem to have overdone the "Tim Nice But Dim" thing with Ingram in terms of his general personality and demeanour.

The television series is very enjoyable and quite humorous.

Easy to confuse reality with the programme.

in answer to 1st time posters question ,the cougher ,Tecwen Whitlock ,thought he knew the 1 million answer ,but asked guy next to him ,and he gave same answer ,so he gave the signal .The major was only following instructions ,if you hear the cough ,thats the answer ,he doesnt know how sure they are ,does he.T he you tube documentary gives you a clearer picture of what they did.

The television series is very enjoyable and quite humorous


Lionel from Legal.

I wonder how true to life he is or if he even existed.

cheers snowy,
as whitlock I think only got a grand when he had a go ,hard to believe with out outside or inside help  he knew 99% answers to 250,500,million pound questionx

The actor who plays Ingram is superb.

Matthew Macfayden apparently....

i admit they got lucky with the questions ,but it wasnt just whitlock ,some answers were signalled by the wife coughing,and she was quite smart ,so basically you had 2 above average quizzers answering the questions ,and a clueless stooge in the chair.

the above average quizzers made 33 grand between them in the chair,hardly evidence to risk 460,000 on from a whisper from a  bloke sat next to you.

theres not a person alive in my opinion who risks nearly 500 grand on a muffled cough unless he no,s for a certain fact ,that the cougher no,s the answer for certain from an outside/inside source, imo

The lead copper has had a few minor roles but played Simon's dad in The Inbetweeners.

reading today the majors solicitor has an appeal coming, where she says itv  faded out doctored other coughing going on at the same time in the court case

they've gone bankrupt 4 times

Running a market stall, eh.
This time next year, they'll all be millionaires

@ Ang , its the way forward , A few of us will need to go down the Market Stall route

Charles and di ingram were even in who wants to be a millionare couples...  which wasnt even mentioned in QUIZ.... The whole thing stinks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB7SaZVH8ls&t=2m36s

i think guilty, , but beyond reasonable doubt, the verdict should be NOT GUILTY

Agreed, shouldn't be found not guilty, aside from that though I think how this programme has been done will see the Ingram's viewed in a more favourable light by the public, they are being portrayed very much as victim's IMO.

shouldn't be found guilty

SHES A BRILLIANT DEFENCE LAWYER

If this is a true reflection & I was on the jury I could not possibly find them quilty, do I think they did cheat yes but that's totally besides the point.

thing is a lot of jurys are so thick they dont know what beyond reasonable doubt means

They'll make a million off the back of this if they've got anything about them.

must say the main actors were superb

Quite likely a substantially larger amount of evidence was produced at the trial than shown in a television drama.

If this is a true reflection & I was on the jury I could not possibly find them quilty, do I think they did cheat yes but that's totally besides the point.


I agree. Where was the evidence?

Is the Martin Bashir documentary any more informative?

The trial lasted four weeks.

Just seen your post, Angoose.  I've read the wiki page but that's about it.

The programme was great viewing though.

If you were charged with a very serious crime and had a choice between a jury trial or a judge only trial, which would you go for?

thats the trouble these days it seems you can be convicted without real   evudence, whatever weinstein was, there really wasnt hard evidence to convict him. ( from what i read and heard anyway)

difficult one that angoose, im not sure

Judge obviously not overly impresssed with the verdict, hence the suspended sentence imo.

Your choice might be different depending on whether or not you actually committed the crime

exactly

elisjohn 15 Apr 20 21:08 
thing is a lot of jurys are so thick they dont know what beyond reasonable doubt means

Exactly what happened when I did jury sevice, only myself & one other person got the brief about beyond reasonable doubt, crazy thing was the trial went into a third week & One juror left to go on holiday, that left a majority of 9-2 the missing juror had already stated she voted guilty, you can imagine how popular we were in the jury room, the judge would have accepted a 10-2 majority  so a hung jury it was & don't know  if there was ever a retrial.

pumphol,

You reckon you had it tough, have you watched 12 Angry Men? Great film.

I thought he made a good point about the gasp from the audience when he said 'A1'.  If he thought that was indicative, maybe he would change his mind.

Also, if he thought that the 50-50 was NOT a random removal of two wrong answers, he might have initially said A1 as a tac tic.

If you remember, Chris T only said "no help from the audience" before FFF.

if i was innocent id hope a good judge would halt proceedings before the jury decided,

I've never done jury service but I have seen "Poetic Justice, Innit?"

I would imagine half the jury just want to go home asap.

trouble is i mentioned most of the jury are thick, but whats worse the cps arent much better , and theyre supposed to be well educated

I would have got the cougher to cough on a wrong answer and still won

They'll make a million off the back of this if they've got anything about them.


I would have thought there'd also now be an appetite for another series of the show itself.

It really was like "Poetic Justice Innit?"  (That's an episode of Minder, btw)

Basically the majority pressure the minority in the jury room  mainly because they want to get home for their poxy tea.

They would love somebody like me then, I’d be the Henry Fonda character in Twelve Angry Men

On what was presented there I could not find anyone guilty , As for Techwins NO , the only person that heard it was the Accused

in the whole Studio ?

And they had to highlight or made it louder on the Tape PMSL Unreal ..

You can edit anything and make someone look like a mass murderer FFS

Why did their Lawyer not say you could have added coughs ??

PAY THE MAN !!! FFS

If you watch the Docu ,you can come to only one Verdict , but that did not Include the Trial .. I dont think.

From wiki:

TV appearances

Following his appearance on Millionaire, Ingram has appeared on other various TV shows, including The Games,[27] The Weakest Link, and Wife Swap, featuring alongside his wife in the latter two.[28]


Insurance fraud case

In late 2003, Ingram and his wife were charged with further fraud offences. On 28 October, Ingram was found guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, and of a second charge of deception, having attempted to claim on an insurance policy after an alleged burglary at his home. Ingram had failed to tell Direct Line Insurance about claims he had made in the three years before he took out the policy in July 2001. The court was told that Ingram had been a "habitual claimant" with Norwich Union after suffering "unfortunate" losses of private possessions.[29]

Christopher Parker, prosecuting, said Ingram switched insurers to Zurich Insurance Group in 1997, after Norwich Union reduced a burglary claim from £19,000 to £9,000, and in 2000 switched again to Direct Line. "He has been ineluctably dishonest", Parker said. "He went to Direct Line and didn't make a disclosure about his claims history because he knew he wouldn't have been insured. It might not have started off as the most monstrous piece of villainy but these things tend to snowball and it all came to a sticky end when he claimed for £30,000." Staff at Direct Line were already "suspicious" about Ingram's £30,000 burglary claim but decided to investigate only after reading newspaper coverage about his questionable win on Millionaire.[29]

Ingram was given a conditional discharge on the charge of fraudulently claiming £30,000 on insurance. The judge told Ingram he took into account "the punishment [Ingram had] brought upon [himself] and [his] dire financial state" and rejected an alternative option of community service after Ingram told a probation officer he feared other criminals would bully him.[30]

if they wernt part of spooners team how did 3 family members get on the show,not only did they to beat joe public to get on but 1000,s of spooners mob to get on,if as spooner said they got 400 plus on show,not many left to get man and wife applying separately weeks apart on to show,
even if you forget the rest and just go to final question no one alive could keep a straight face,not get excited, not blurt out they think they no this,all an act ,no ones guessing to lose nearly half a million,so somehow he was 110% certain,inside job for me

On the set of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? back in 2001 there were technical crew behind the scenes who had been working in television for decades.

They had "seen everything, absolutely everything", says Phil Davies, the senior floor manager for the show at the time.

Or they thought they had.

"These are people who'd been in the industry 20 years, 30 years. Afterwards, they were all saying, 'I've never seen anything like this.' Well, neither had I."

Davies is recalling his account of the now infamous coughing scandal, which later saw contestant Charles Ingram, his wife Diana and accomplice Tecwen Whittock, who was waiting to play himself in the "fastest finger first" seats, convicted of cheating and handed suspended sentences following Ingram's remarkable million-pound "win".

Almost 20 years on, the story is in the spotlight once again thanks to new three-part ITV series Quiz.

The drama, starring Matthew Macfadyen and Sian Clifford as Charles and Diana Ingram, and Michael Sheen spot-on as host Chris Tarrant, attempts to share both sides of the story, as the couple have always maintained their innocence and are now set to appeal.

Criminal defence solicitor Rhona Friedman, who is now representing the Ingrams, says new analysis incorporating technological advances casts doubt on the safety of their convictions, and that it is now possible to identify coughs made by Whittock at moments that weren't significant to Charles Ingram getting the correct answers, as well as coughs made by other members in the audience.

Their legal team also says that new investigation into the case also shows that the integrity of the audio evidence of coughing given to the jury at trial may have been compromised.

"Although none of the defendants were sent to prison, all three had their reputations ruined and they continue to be publicly mocked for crimes they did not commit," the legal team said in a statement.

But Davies, who had worked through hundreds of recordings of the show, and gave evidence at the trial, says there is no doubt in his mind that the trio had devised a plan: Whittock would cough when the correct answer was read out.

Situated just metres away from both Ingram in the hot seat opposite Tarrant, and Whittock in the waiting seats for contestants, he says he was able to see - and hear - what was happening.

"I was next to Camera 4, which is the one that Tarrant looks at," he says. "It was Tarrant's close-up camera.

"It's a very small set. Like a lot of TV sets, you see them in real life, and they look about a quarter of the size that they do on the telly because of the wide-angle lenses. So I could move about and sit and watch contestants as and when I needed to, which is what I did on that night. I was the only one who could do that. I was pretty close."

Ingram had already been in the hot seat the previous day, making it to £4,000 with just one lifeline left. Hopes were not high for his second day. In fact, rehearsals - carried out meticulously every day, says Davies - were worked through on the basis of him leaving at the £8,000 mark. Maybe £16,000, if he was lucky.

Ingram, an army major at the time, seemed "very nice, very polite, unexceptional".

He was, says Davies, "exactly what you'd expect a bumbling army major to be like. 'Oh hello, how are you? Jolly good, tickety-boo. Where am I going? Am I? Oh, okay.'

"Just what you'd expect."

Diana Ingram was not as warm as her husband, but again, there was nothing suspicious about her, Davies says.

"Maybe she was shy, maybe she was nervous. I don't know. You just accept the different types, you know who you can chat with and have a bit of fun with and who you can't. But he was polite and easy to get on with. No problem at all. There was nothing untoward [at first] at all."

As is portrayed in Quiz, Diana Ingram had already appeared on the show herself, winning £32,000. Davies says he can't remember if he was aware at the time.

"We did dozens and dozens and dozens of these things. It wasn't at all unusual. The amount of times someone would come up to you and say, 'Oh, hello Phil. I knew, you know, Jeffrey who was in episode nine four years ago, you must remember me'.

"It used to happen all the time."

So there was nothing about the Ingrams that raised suspicion until his second day in the chair.

As he started to answer question after question right, seemingly with no knowledge and luck on his side, some of the crew started to smell a rat.

"We always said to the contestants, you've got to verbalise what you're thinking. Because, as Tarrant used to say, otherwise it's not much of a show. There's not much to see on Millionaire, it's just someone sat in a chair.

"Tarrant was very good, he used to prompt them. 'What are you thinking?' 'Anything you can eliminate?' Or 'what are you leaning towards?' He used to prompt them all the time. And they would always tell you what their knowledge was, their working out."

It was the £32,000 question that sealed it in the minds of the crew, says Davies.

"Who had a hit UK album with 'Born To Do It', released in 2000?" After using his 50-50, his last lifeline, Ingram was faced with two options: A1 or Craig David.

"The major said, 'Oh, I've never heard of Craig David'. But he went with it.

"In the hot seat, the contestants always talk through their knowledge and they always eliminate answers. Always, always, always. I've seen hundreds of these things, hundreds of contestants. They'll say it was definitely not that because X happened 10 years before, or that band had broken up by then. There was always solid information.

"The major was supposed to be in Mensa, have a strategy… and yet it was all missing, every bit of that was missing.

"The other thing that doesn't really get mentioned, is that the show gets edited down. It gets edited down because it's not unusual, particularly on the higher questions, for a contestant to sit there for 10, 12 minutes. Easily, on one question.

Imagine that, watching that for 12 minutes. Them sitting there going, 'erm...'.

"With him, there was [no reasoning]. It was, 'well, I don't know. I've never heard of that. Or that. Third one... No. The fourth one, not either'. It kept going on like this and we were just flabbergasted."

Despite their suspicions, the crew were told they had to keep going.

"The first night, he was rubbish," says Davies. "He got up to £4,000 and he'd used two lifelines. People who do that, they don't get very far. They just don't.

"But [the next day] he kept on getting them right."

The plan for which they were convicted involved Whittock coughing when the correct answer was read out. Simple enough. But it also relied on trusting completely, or knowing for certain, that Whittock had got it right.

This is another part of the case the Ingrams' lawyers take issue with, saying the plan would have centred on "total faith" that Whittock's answers were "infallible, as at every stage of Charles Ingram's appearance, a wrong answer meant elimination and the loss of tens of thousands of pounds".

Davies says he can't explain that part.

"I mean, as a floor manager, that's beyond my remit. I don't know. Apart from the fact he was a college lecturer, he was obviously a clever man.

"Maybe he just had a lucky run. But I think that Diana was doing a bit of coughing as well.

"All I can say is the only times [Whittock] coughed were when the major was trying to answer a question, and at no other point - like, no other point.

"I can assure you he was indicating answers.

"And [Ingram] just kept gambling huge, huge, huge amounts of money. Imagine, you're on £500,000, you can take home half a million quid. And then the next question you say, I don't know the answer.

"You wouldn't, there's just no way, no way on Earth would you do that. And it had happened again and again and again and again and again."

Davies says he started to look around the set.

"I was crouched down and I was watching. And Tecwen, there he was, coughing. One single cough. At an appropriate point he'd turn around towards the hot seat and do one cough and turn away again.

"He said during the trial that it was very dusty in the studio. I'm sorry but you could have eaten your dinner off that set. It was immaculate, absolutely immaculate. And he didn't have his cough in rehearsals either. It only appeared on the night."

The Ingrams were searched as soon as filming stopped, says Davies, but he's not sure about Whittock. Nothing was found.

Davies went on to be a witness during the trial and spoke about the coughing.

"I just said quite honestly what I saw. I didn't elaborate anything. I didn't make anything up. I have absolutely no doubt at all that it happened and the conviction was correct.

"In court, I said the thing that was really odd is that he made no attempt to stifle it. Normally, any coughs were natural, embarrassed, and with an attempt to stifle them, because we were filming. This was an artificial cough. But we had to keep going because there was no proof."

After going through all the different options for the million-pound question - "A number one followed by one hundred zeros is known by what name?" - Ingram eventually went for "googol".

It was the right answer. But the atmosphere behind the scenes was "as dead as a dodo" following the win, Davies says.

"The fact that it went all the way up to the million and then... as we did the million question and he got it right, everyone was just silent. Not Tarrant, not the audience - that was mayhem as you'd expect - but everybody else was just really quiet.

"It was then that Tarrant was like, 'What's the matter? What's going on? They were cheating? Really? I didn't notice anything'."

It should have been a huge moment. After three years on air, only two people before Ingram had ever won the top prize.

"Even the cleverest people could go off with £16,000, £32,000, £64,000," says Davies. "It only takes one thing that you don't know anything about, one little gap in your knowledge.

"The super smart ones generally you'd say, yeah, they'll probably get to £64,000. Even £125,000 was quite rare. It really was that unusual."

But the more questions Ingram answered, the more evidence there was against him.

"As a lot of us said afterwards, if he'd stopped at £125,000 or even £250,000, he probably would've got away with it."

Davies has since left the world of television, and now lives in France running a family holiday resort.

But the Ingrams' cheating scandal is a part of his career he won't forget, and he is completely unconvinced by any suggestions in Quiz that the trio could be innocent.

"He's guilty as sin," Davies says. "As was Tecwen. Whatever the drama might say, that's what happened on the night."

First 2 episodes were watchable. Ended up trying to be a comedy which totally ruined it for me. Nearly as farcical as a carry on film. Disappointing. Could've been very good.

The trial really was temporarily suspended due to an outbreak of coughing.

The programme was in the main an accurate depiction of the facts although Paul Smith never met Paddy Spooner around the time of the trial. He did, however, meet up with him during the production of 'Quiz'.

The trial really was temporarily suspended due to an outbreak of coughing.

The programme was in the main an accurate depiction of the facts although Paul Smith never met Paddy Spooner around the time of the trial. He did, however, meet up with him during the production of 'Quiz'.

I used to Comment on all The Luvvie Middle class , that were on there ...

Whom I thought were all well off anyway ...

Little did we know they were all bang at it

Some them up to a tee ,tbh.

Don't be fooled by that fluffy exterior - the middle class are ruthless!

as a good friend /workmate of  mine used to say

every fooooker,s at it ,except us

Did jury service in the 1990's.Similar scenario there was a self appointed bully come spokesman while 5 or 6 said jack s**t

Have seen both the play and film of 12 angry men and if that's a realistic presentation of what happens in the jury room my inclination would be to risk a jury if actually guilty and not if innocent.
As far as Quiz tv program concerned ,on the evidence presented astounded found guilty. Came over as a likeable character.

I have very little doubt about their guilt.The four pagers to me are highly significant,whether they were used or not.It
showed the degree of intent to which they were prepared to go to ,to win the money.If they had quit at 250k they would have
been laughing all the way too the bank.

most of us think they were guilty, but from the tv prog there was only one verdict the jury could have come up with, NOT GUILTY, and imo the judge should have directed them to that decission.

blunder, from that tv , how would you have found them, remember beyond on all reasonable doubt

they were involved helping to make a programme,that to a lot of people made them possibly look innocent as their appeal is been launched,this must either think the appeal judges are barking mad or have some big hitters batting for them

Just watched all three episodes back to back, and it struck me that the court episode was heavily weighted towards the defence lawyer.

Surely the brother was called as a witness, and surely he was challenged as to why he twice left the studio to try and make a call.
But it wasn't shown.

Anyone know if he was a witness ?

I don't think he was.

Have any forumites been on the show?

elisjohn ,if you had purely watched the tv program, I agree that there was an element of doubt.But the program makers have
tried to emphasize that element,the only way to truly judge is sit in on the trial itself.

Im no Colombo but I've taken a keen interest in this over the past week and found out a few things which I can only say make your own judgement on.
Forget the Ingrams for a few minutes and look at the bigger picture....the money creamed off by Spooners 'syndicate'.The quizzing community are surprisingly quiet about this programme on their
closed facebook pages.After watching a couple of well known quizzers on Youtube on Millionaire a comment on one led me to a link for Millionaire Fandom which list all large winners(far more than I ever imagined,despite watching the show from the word go,i.e there have been 50 winners of £250,00).
James Plaskett the writer of the original play ,strong believer in the innocence of the Ingrams was in fact a contestant on the show in 2006.Incredibly this was his 5th time in the FFF chair,
considering the volume of calls to get on this show to get on once is very fortunate ...to get on twice the odds become huge....5 times??. Yet this happened to strangely high amount of contestants
with connections to the 'quizzing community'.

1st watched Mark Labbett .Nothing too unusual except he'd been in the FFF chair 5 months prior.£32,000.

Then it got more interesting.

2nd watched Barry Simmons 5/2/05.Came across very nervy(fair enough).Got to £16,000 then came need for phone a friend.Then became quite shaky ,he phoned Mark Kerr - fairly well known quizzer.''Where is he ?''
asks Tarrant .A clearly flustered Barry says ''Errr at my house,with my wife'' .This is a guy who lives 70 miles away from Barry. Gives him the answer whilst proclaiming to be '90% certain'.
Ends up with £64,000

Then go to Fandom to check Mark Kerr's record on show.One appearance 31/1/04.Does very well,gets to stage he needs help ,rings his phone a friend ....Pat Gibson.He gives correct answer
which he is '90% certain' on. £250,000 win.


Then check Pat Gibsons record.24/4/04.He gets to £1M question,thinks he knows it but rings his friend.....Mark Kerr who in turn gives him the answer which he is '90% certain'.



At this point I decided to have look at Paddy Spooners record.Went on 30/3/2000.He won £250,000. Guess how certain his phone a friend was?

All circumstantial surely?. Found out a lot more too,but that will do for now.Check out Steve Kidd's record on the show thats a good one.

Re.Barry was in FFF seat previously on 24/4/04 & March 04
Re.Pat in seat previously 28/2/04

Plaskett's stint on the show was memorable to many.Very odd and uncommunicative with Tarrant.I observed lots of blinking and gentle nodding as if counting.His answers were
none too convincing either.For instance who was the mother of Charles 2nd and James 2nd? He admitted not to even knowing who their much more famous father was.Little or no explanation to other
correct answers as the blinking and nodding continued occasionally with his leg in an 'unorthodox' position.I'll keep my opinions on that one close to my chest.He is apparently none too popular
in the quizzing community.

I watched Dianes brothers appearance, think was his 4th time on the program and also in the FFF group was Dave Edwards who although not getting into the seat on that occasion came back some months later to become the 2nd millionaire. On his way to £1m he got stuck on 1 question and used all his lifelines, and still went against his better judgement to go with the audience who proved to be correct.
Dianes brother left the show with £32,000 and didn't use one of his lifelines which he wanted to save for later, as did Diane herself who had a lifeline left and went out at £32,000, greed did for both of them.
   How so many people kept getting on the show over and over again, Charles and Diane even managed to get on a couples show where she did the FFF round, can't recall how they did.

In another coincidenceRichard Edwards son of £1M winner David Edwards won £125,000 on the show 3 years after his father.They were each others phone a friend.
Oddly neither Richard nor Chris Tarrant mentioned the connection during the show ,even after Tarrant had to talk to David Edwards.

What do tv detectives always say about coincidence ?
Usually something like "I don't believe in coincidence".

What was the opening statement of the defence counsel in the tv version of the trial ?
"You are going to hear a lot about a series of coincidences".

Unlike a lot of people  I haven't seen this programme but did follow this closely at the time.

My vague recollection is the Major was very dim and went about the scam in the worst way possible. Instead of keeping his thoughts to himself until he got the signal, on some questions he mused aloud and made clear he really had no clue about the subject of the question, then suddenly was giving a confident final answer............

This was addressed in the program tobes.
The Major said he used tips from his wife's book and advice he received
He played the game of going through his thought processes out loud to add to the drama.
I'm not sure how true it is but the Major is a member of Mensa (shown in the program)
I recommend watching the Quiz.
It is entertaining.

I posted this a few days ago:



I thought he made a good point about the gasp from the audience when he said 'A1'.  If he thought that was indicative, maybe he would change his mind.

Also, if he thought that the 50-50 was NOT a random removal of two wrong answers, he might have initially said A1 as a tactic.

If you remember, Chris T only said "no help from the audience" before FFF.

as many of us suggested
Judges told to stop using 'beyond reasonable doubt' because jurors don't understand what it means and ask if they're 'satisfied that they are sure' instead
'Beyond reasonable doubt' replaced by 'satisfied that they are sure' for jurors
The move comes after concerns that jurors didn't understand reasonable doubt


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8257467/Judges-told-stop-using-reasonable-doubt-jurors-dont-understand-means.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8257267/Lawyer-Coughing-Major-says-high-tech-audio-analysis-prove-innocent.html

We have new evidence that can prove our innocence: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire 'Coughing Major' Charles Ingram believes analysis of audio tapes - and a world expert on coughing - will clear his name

Dismal news from the criminal justice system where – in a change of great importance – juries are no longer told they must be persuaded ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that a defendant is guilty. They must merely be ‘sure’. These expressions do not mean the same thing. You may be ‘sure’ you want a pepperoni pizza rather than a vegan one. But the word touches a different bit of the brain from the one reached by the nagging, awkward phrase ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. There is some suggestion jurors were finding it hard to understand what ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ meant. Well, my reply to any such juror is that if you don’t know what it means, then you are not fit to sit on a jury, and should stand aside.

peter hitchens column today

listening to their brief, itv have got themselves involved in a 3 night propaganda programme,been used as a prelude to a further appeal,it was a drama now been used as the truth of what happened
I thought the major in the drama said he hadn't read his wives book

New series starting at the weekend.