Charles Ingram
Charles William Ingram (born 6 August 1963) is an English former British Army major who became known for cheating on the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (WWTBAM) in 2001, after winning the maximum prize of one million pounds. Following a lengthy trial at Southwark Crown Court, he was convicted on a single count of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception. In 2003, Ingram was convicted of an unrelated insurance fraud, and ordered to resign his commission as a major by the Army Board.
In 2020, an ITV drama was released, titled Quiz, themed around the WWTBAM scandal.
Education and career
Charles Ingram was born on 6 August 1963 in Shardlow, Derbyshire. He is the son of retired RAF wing commander John Ingram (RAF/39187) and his wife Susan, a theatre set designer. John Ingram's Wellington bomber, operating with 103 Squadron from RAF Elsham Wolds, had been shot down on the night of 20/21 September 1941 and he was taken Prisoner of War, two of the crew being killed.[1] Ingram's parents divorced when he was young and he spent most of his education years boarding privately at Oswestry School.[2] There he was a member of the Combined Cadet Force and completed the Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award.[1] Ingram went on to obtain a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from Kingston University.[2]
In 1986, Ingram trained for the British Army at Sandhurst and was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Engineers.[3] He was promoted to the rank of captain in 1990,[3] and major in 1995.[4] In 1998, Ingram was sent to Banja Luka in Bosnia[5] for six months on United Nations peacekeeping duties.[6] He graduated from Cranfield University with a master's degree in corporate management in August 2000.[1] He was ordered by the Army Board via letter to resign his commission on 20 August 2003 and give up his rank of major.[7]
Ingram met his wife Diana while she was training to be a teacher at Barry College in South Wales. The two became engaged during his first posting with the Royal Engineers in Germany. The couple were married in November 1989 and have three children.[1] Since leaving the Army, Ingram has written two novels: The Network, published on 27 April 2006, and Deep Siege, published on 8 October 2007.[8]
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
On 9 and 10 September 2001, Ingram was a contestant on the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? His wife Diana and her brother Adrian Pollock had previously been contestants on the show, both winning £32,000.[9][10] The show, presented by Chris Tarrant, was one of the highest-rated in the UK at its peak in 1999; one edition was watched by 19 million viewers, a third of the British population at the time.[11]
Ingram practised for about twenty minutes per day on a "Fastest Finger First" machine that he constructed.[12] By the time recording ended on the first day, Ingram had reached £4,000 and used two of his three "lifelines". The production team doubted he would proceed much further when recording resumed, but he went on to win the top prize of £1 million.[11] Ingram flipped between answers erratically, appearing to settle on one answer before suddenly moving to another. For example, when asked who recorded the 2000 Craig David album Born to Do It, Ingram said he had "never heard of" David and appeared to go for a different option before moving to the correct answer.[11]
The show's production company, Celador, suspended the £1 million payout after they suspected Ingram had cheated. Production staff accused Ingram and his wife of defrauding the show by having an accomplice amongst the waiting contestants, lecturer Tecwen Whittock, who would cough when Ingram read out a correct answer.[13]
Tarrant, who drank champagne with the Ingrams in their dressing room, said he was convinced that Ingram was genuine when he signed the £1 million cheque: "If I thought there was anything wrong, I certainly would not have signed it." When asked whether the atmosphere in the dressing room was tense after the show, Tarrant replied: "No, not at all. They seemed as normal as people who have just won a million pounds would be in the situation." However, he said that on his way to the dressing room, "I had been told there had been quite an unpleasant exchange."[14] A member of the crew, Eve Winstanley, testified in court that Ingram seemed "very unhappy" for someone who had just won a million pounds.[13]
In court, Paul Smith of Celador confirmed that his company had previously produced a television programme involving witnesses in the case, for broadcast on ITV after the trial. The programme, Tonight With Trevor McDonald – Major Fraud, was broadcast on ITV on 21 April 2003 (a month after the trial began), and credited with over 17 million viewers. On 9 May 2003 (the day after Major Fraud aired in the US as a special episode of Primetime), the same channel broadcast another programme on the same topic, entitled The Final Answer, which was credited with over 5 million viewers.
Trial
Following a trial at Southwark Crown Court lasting four weeks (including jury deliberation for three-and-a-half days), Ingram, his wife and Whittock were convicted by a majority verdict of "procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception" on 7 April 2003. Both the Ingrams and Whittock were each given prison sentences suspended for two years (the Ingrams were sentenced to eighteen months and Whittock was sentenced to twelve months), each fined £15,000, and each ordered to pay £10,000 towards prosecution costs. Within two months of the verdict and sentence, the trial judge ordered the Ingrams to pay additional defence costs: Charles Ingram £40,000 and Diana Ingram £25,000. Altogether with legal fees, the Ingrams had to pay £115,000.[15]
On 19 August 2003, the Army Board ordered Ingram to resign his commission as a major after 17 years of service, but stated that this would not affect his pension entitlements.[16]
On 19 May 2004, the Court of Appeal denied Ingram leave to appeal against his conviction and upheld his sentence, but agreed to quash his wife's fine and prosecution costs.[17] On 5 October, the House of Lords denied Ingram leave to appeal against his fine and prosecution costs, and he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. On 20 October, the original trial judge reduced Ingram's defence costs order to £25,000 and Diana's defence costs order to £5,000.[18] Ingram's defence costs were later further reduced to £5,000 on appeal.
In 2006, journalist Jon Ronson, who covered the case at the time for The Guardian, wrote that he believed the Ingrams might be innocent. Ronson, who attended every day of the trial, had observed that when the word "cough" was mentioned, pensioners in the public gallery had coughed. James Plaskett, who had appeared on Millionaire several times before winning £250,000 in January 2006, argued this was an example of coughs caused by unconscious triggers; Whittock had simply coughed involuntarily when he heard the correct answer. Whittock was also accused of having coughed after Ingram mentioned an incorrect option to his penultimate question and swiftly following that up with a smothered "No". But Plaskett, who had sat in that very same seat, argued that he might have audibly said it in response to an incorrect option in the same way that other waiting contestants have been known to whisper "No".[19]
A book covering the case, Bad Show: The Quiz, The Cough, The Millionaire Major, by Bob Woffinden and James Plaskett was published in January 2015. Quiz, a play written by James Graham that re-examines the events and subsequent conviction of the Ingrams and Whittock, opened at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, on 3 November 2017, running until 9 December 2017.[20] The play transferred to the West End—playing at the Noël Coward Theatre from 31 March 2018 to 16 June 2018.[21]
Recorded evidence
In court, Ingram claimed the videotape of his appearance on Millionaire was "unrepresentative of what I heard", and he continues to assert that it was "unfairly manipulated". A video recording, with coughing amplified relative to other sounds including Ingram's and Tarrant's voices, was prepared by Celador's editors (Editworks) for the prosecution and "for the benefit of the jury" during the trial (and later for viewers in television broadcasts). Ingram claims that he neither "listened for, encouraged, nor noticed any coughing". The prosecution alleged that, of the 192 coughs recorded during his second-night performance, 32 were recorded from the ten Fastest Finger First contestants, and that 19 of the 32 coughs heard on the video tape were "significant". The prosecution asserted that these "significant" coughs were by Whittock, each falling any time the correct answer had been spoken. During the trial, Tarrant also denied hearing any coughing throughout the episode, claiming he was too busy to notice.[14]
Testimony of Larry Whitehurst
Larry Whitehurst, another contestant who had appeared on the show as a Fastest Finger First contestant on four occasions, was adamant that he had known the answers to Ingram's questions. He told the court that he had been able to detect a pattern of coughing, and that he was entirely convinced that coughing had helped Ingram.[22]
Testimony of Tecwen Whittock
Whittock claims to have suffered a persistent cough for his entire life[23] and insisted that he had a genuine cough caused by a combination of hay fever and a dust allergy, and that it was only coincidence that his throat problem coincided with the right answers.[24] During the trial, however, the jury heard evidence that once Whittock himself earned the right to sit in the hot seat, his throat problems disappeared.[24] Whittock later testified that he drank several glasses of water before he went in front of the cameras.[25] Whittock also insisted that he had not known the answers to three of the questions he allegedly helped with. However, the police found the answer to the twelfth question, regarding the artist who painted The Ambassadors, in a hand-written general knowledge book at Whittock's home.[24]
Davies, the floor manager, said that, as soon as the coughing came to his notice during the recording, he decided to find out who was responsible. "The loudest coughing was coming from Tecwen in seat number three", he said. "He was talking to the person to his left when I was observing him, and then he turned towards the set and the hot seat to cough." Whittock remarked during the trial that "you do not cough into someone's face".[26]
During the trial, Whittock portrayed himself as a "serial quiz show loser" because he had been eliminated in round one of Fifteen to One, had also failed on The People Versus and had been able to win only an atlas on his appearance on Sale of the Century.[27]
Insurance fraud
In late 2003, the Ingrams were charged with further fraud offences. On 28 October, Charles 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.[28]
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.[28]
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 you have brought upon yourself and your dire financial state", and he rejected an alternative option of a community service order after Ingram told a probation officer he feared other criminals would bully him.[29]
After Millionaire
Following his appearance on Millionaire, Ingram has appeared on other various TV shows, including The Games,[30] The Weakest Link (on which he featured with his wife, Diana) and Wife Swap.[31]
In 2010, Ingram lost three toes in an accident involving a lawn mower.[32]
In popular culture
The story surrounding the scandal was adapted by James Graham into the West End play Quiz with Gavin Spokes playing the role of Ingram. In August 2019, ITV announced that they had commissioned Graham to adapt the play into a three part television drama with Matthew Macfadyen as Ingram.
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