We have all watched high-prize quiz shows on television and wondered how much money we would win if we were in the contestant's shoes. Today's TV quiz shows give away vast sums of cash and they attract high viewing figures, production companies constantly competing to dangle greater rewards in front of competitors' noses.
Quiz shows are easy to produce and they make compulsive viewing. Watching someone in the spotlight, sweat on their forehead, trying to get their hands on millions of dollars is exciting stuff to watch. How would we spend the money if we won? Most of us will never know.
Any viewer who has ever sat in the armchair watching a TV quiz show must have wondered at one time if it was possible to cheat and break the system. As the questions become harder and the stakes get higher, surely there must be some way for an outsider to get the answer to the stressed and hesitant contestant? In these days of miniature technology, what about a micro-receiver in the ear with a friend somewhere far away from the TV studio looking up the answers and sending them to the contestant in the hot seat?
Charles Ingram, a competitor on the British version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, came up with a much easier system of getting the answers correct and ended up at the centre of a sensational court trial that was as exciting as the quiz programme itself.
In March 2003, Ingram, a 39-year-old major in the British Army, was brought to trial in London accused of attempting to procure GBP1 million (HK$13.1 million) by deception from the producers of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Ingram had appeared on the show on September 9 and 10, 2002, battling his way hesitantly through the questions to eventually win the grand prize. But during and after the recording sessions of Ingram's two appearances on the show, production staff and sound engineers had become suspicious that something odd had been going on. Microphones had picked up 19 coughs from the same member of the audience each time Ingram had repeated the correct answer to the question the quiz-master had asked. Ingram, his wife Diana (both pictured below), and a friend Tecwen Whittock, were investigated by the police and accused of attempting fraud.