Millionaire quiz show Major 'worked for everything'
An army major accused of cheating to win the top prize on TV quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was today described as a “hard-working, law abiding citizen who worked for everything he has got”.
Royal Engineers Officer Charles Ingram was a “committed soldier” who had lived a “honest and decent, hard-working life” said his barrister Sonia Woodley QC at his trial.
Ms Woodley said that the “theories” put forward by the prosecution during the high profile case were “tenuous and unsafe”.
“At most it amounts to suspicion,” she told the jury at London’s Southwark Crown Court during her closing speech.
Ms Woodley asked the jury to consider “the nature of the man” and the life Ingram had led.
She said he was a good father to his three young daughters and a devoted husband who had chosen a life in the army.
“You may think if you choose a life in the army you never expect to get rich,” she added.
Ingram, 39, is in the dock with his nursery nurse wife, Diana, also 39, of High Street, Easterton, Wiltshire, and college lecturer Tecwen Whittock, 53, of Heol-y-Gors, Whitchurch, Cardiff.
Each deny a single charge of “procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception” on September 10, 2001.
The Crown claims Whittock, who is head of business studies at Pontypridd College, South Wales, used a total of 19 strategic coughs to let Ingram know which of the four options in the ITV1 quiz were the correct answer to a question.
Ms Woodley dismissed prosecution claims that the defendant had been experimenting with the use of pagers to pass the correct answer to Ingram as he sat in the show’s hot seat.
The Crown claimed that the trio had dropped the plan, opting to use a series of coded coughs instead.
Ms Woodley said: “We say the suggestion of the use of the pagers is untenable and implausible.
“It is a shot in the dark to bolster the Crown’s theory that Mr Ingram was cheating,” she said.
Ms Woodley also dealt with accounts of the experience of being in the TV studio and whether Ingram would have noticed Whittock’s coughing, which he has explained was caused by a dust allergy.
She said he was shown to be concentrating on the screen listing the possible answers to the questions and on the show’s presenter Chris Tarrant.
Ms Woodley also reminded the jury that during his evidence Mr Tarrant had said he was not aware of any coughing and she said in his experience of presenting the show he should have known if there was cheating going on.
Ms Woodley said that Ingram’s behaviour after winning £1 million and the emotions he showed were “entirely normal” in the circumstances.
“Mr Tarrant described them as normal as people who had just won £1 million would be in that situation,” she said.
Ms Woodley also highlighted evidence from Mr Ingram’s colleagues who had described him as “a man with high moral standards”.
She said he was described as having a “reputation for integrity, honest, intelligent, able, knowledgeable.”
Ms Woodley concluded: “To cheat Celador (the programmes makers) out of £1 million is a serious matter but if you stop for a moment there is something that is more serious and that is to be labelled a cheat when you are no such thing.”
