Tonight with Trevor McDonald
(1999– )
Footage from the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire is examined to reveal how a contestant almost cheated his way to the jackpot.
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Title: Major Fraud (08 May 2003)
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| Episode complete credited cast: | |||
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Martin Bashir | ... | Self - Presenter |
| Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
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Robert Brydges | ... | Self - Standby Contestant |
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Chris Burke | ... | Self - Production Co-ordinator |
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Steve Carroll | ... | Self - Contestant |
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Phil Davies | ... | Self - Floor Manager |
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Kevin Duff | ... | Self - Sound Supervisor |
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Peter French | ... | Self - Voice and Sound Expert (as Dr Peter French) |
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Charles Ingram | ... | Self (archive footage) |
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Diana Ingram | ... | Self (archive footage) |
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Tom Lucy | ... | Self - Contestant |
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Paul Smith | ... | Self - Celador, Managing Director |
| Chris Tarrant | ... | Self | |
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Rod Taylor | ... | Self - Executive Producer |
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Larry Whitehurst | ... | Self - Contestant |
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Tecwen Whittock | ... | Self (archive footage) |
Footage from the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire is examined to reveal how a contestant almost cheated his way to the jackpot.
Wife... brother... brother-in-law... What's this, the mafia?
A game-show is meant to be good clean fun, a general-knowledge contest between names picked out of a hat. So it is not reassuring to hear that Clan Ingram has been appearing repeatedly on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire', as though it's some kind of club. And that's only the first of many hints that all is not what it seems - the tension mounting-up dramatically, as the prizes accelerate towards the magic million.
In fact, these signs became so obvious that Chris Tarrant was later criticised for not noticing anything amiss. But ironically, Tarrant's job as ringmaster of this hectic circus presented too many distractions for such cool analysis. It was several others on the team, not under such pressure, who were reporting their suspicions almost from the start.
First, there was the behaviour of Ingram himself, who looked as though he might make a good rugger-captain, but a national quiz champion never. At each question, he goes plodding through all four answers in sequence, sometimes more than once, trying to look profound, and adding comments that are often contradictory. Even for the slow-witted Ingram, this seems a weird ritual, but presently we see what he is doing - waiting for an accomplice in the audience to signal the correct answer by coughing at the right moment.
Then there is his wife Diana, easily recognizable as Lady Macbeth, the brains behind it all. At first, nothing seems particularly out of place, except that she is inclined to glance to her left, for no obvious reason, but never to her right. It is when we get to the quarter-million mark that the stress-levels start to affect her, and she cannot hide her anxiety. At one point, she herself is even driven to cough - twice - in a most unconvincing way. It appears that he was meant to stop at the quarter-million and just take his win, not risk losing it all by going higher (while forgetting that the accomplice too would be unprepared). No wonder she was tapping her pretty foot with impatience.
And then Tarrant himself - perhaps born for the job, with his sociable manner and infectious air of optimism and good cheer, like an advertisement for the millionaire life. If you wonder why he tolerated Ingram's blunderings, it was because quiz-shows need to build-up suspense, with all that slow horror-film music, to contrast with all the left-brain logic.
As always, we get the Flat Earth Society protesting that the dear old major was innocent. Tarrant, after being made to sit through months of evidence in court, has a short way with such dreamers.