Plaskett and Woffinden's book on the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" Fraud

[Neil Graham]

Going off on a slight tangent from the preceding posts some details about James Graham who wrote the TV series referred to. Recently I was asked by the local postman if James Graham was my son. The answer was "No" ; however he attended the local primary school where my children were pupils and my son Jonathan (the postman had a letter addressed to Mr J.Graham) informs me that James was in the year below him and both of them went on to the comprehensive school in town. The successful drama Sherwood, written by James Graham, from earlier this year is based on events that happened about 50 yards from my house.

[James Plaskett]

What convinces you that he is guilty then, might we learn, Mr Goodall?
Since so many people now see cause to query that Prosecution did make its case.

[Chris Goodall]

The fact that the man who was immediately suspected of coughing after the right answers turned out to be an associate of the Ingrams.

[James Plaskett]

[James Plaskett]

Oh right.
That´s your idea of logical reasoning, is it?

There was no evidence they had ever met before.
A tranche of 38 calls between the Ingram household and him existed for the previous 7 months, but how could those have been in any sense of the word "preparatory", since they had no way of knowing he would be on the same show? Diana and her brother were writing a book about the show, so who would have been a more natural person to talk with? Peter Lee was the biggest winner on the show when I wrote to him for tips. Via Celador! They forwarded my letter and he wrote me back ten days later with tips that helped me to win 250K.
Neither WAS Whittock on the same show! For Ingram qualified on his THIRD FFF heat of his first night in the studio which meant Whittock joined him only in time for Question 8. I´ve even seen two online posts suggesting Ingram deliberately flunked the first two FFF heats in order to get his helper to join him (!)
Tarrant published in Millionaire Moments and then again in the Radio Times how it made little sense to him to rely on prompts coming from Whittock since he could only win 1,000 Pounds himself when he got into the Hot Seat after Ingram.
Whittock also bombed out on FOUR other TV Quiz shows: Fifteen to One, Beat the Bong, The People Vs and Sale of the Century.
Further querying of Whittock´s eligibility was given by Jon Ronson in The Guardian when he noted that this ´fake´cougher had THREE diagnosed conditions to be exhibiting a chronic and worsening cough. But Ronson adds that he and other journalists disregarded such inconsistancies becasue "we had already decided he was guilty. We were very much enjoying the narrative of his guilt."
(btw, Mr Goodall, if you want to read how I COMPLETELY CHANGED Ronson´s mind about Ingram´s guilt, then read this!) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ntstobeami
A woman sitting adjacent to Whittock said she noticed nothing out of the ordinary in his coughing.
Why weren´t the simplest of codes deployed? A sip of water for option ´A´, a glance to the right for option ´B´, etc. Why not have the cough come on a, prearranged, wrong answer? Why not code presentation and affirmation? Why not vary the coding?
192 coughs were recorded on the evening when Charles won his million and 19 were cited as ´particular´. That is to say Ingram mentioned an option, then came the cough, then he affirmed that option as his Final Answer. David Edwards won the million 20 weeks before Ingram said that such a distribution of coughs could not be attributed to chance even if you ran the show every day since the beginning of the universe!
BUT, the trial itself, as Ronson wrote in The Guardian, illustrated that people with respiratory problems WILL cough on unconscious stimuli. He attended all of the trial´s 18 days and every time a barrister said ´cough´ large numbers of the elderly people who were unwrapping cough sweets next to him coughed!
Neither, Chris, is it at all clear who the producer of those 19 ´particular´ coughs was! Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Hull University, Alyn Morice, wanted to tell the court that his analyses of the tapes indicated there to be TWO separate coughers. And we know the other could not be Diana for she was filmed. But the technology underpinning that conclusion had not been then peer reviewed. Since then it has been.
Prof. Morice also said afterwards that he found it "astonishing" The Millionaire Three were convicted on the evidence given in court.
I noted on a DVD, Magic Moments and More, released by Celador themselves over a year before trial, that when the first millionaire, Judith Keppel won, on at least FIVE of her correct answers similar ´particular´ coughs were to be heard, and recommended to James Graham he cite those in his TV drama.
So he did.

Any of those FACTS shifted your conclusions, Señor?

[James Plaskett]

But, Chris, since it looks very much as if you have not read Bad Show nor been swung by QUIZ, the TV drama it spawned here is a
wholly separate
argument for why Charles Ingram ought to be paid his million pounds
TOMORROW!


"Judge not less you be judged (?) "
In April 2020 the three part TV drama QUIZ aired in the UK to audiences of some ten million. Later it would be seen in many other countries. It was written by James Graham after he read Bad Show. That book I co-authored with the late Bob Woffinden after we perceived a miscarriage of justice. QUIZ caused a shift in many minds re their surety about the guilt of Major Charles Ingram.
He acquired the soubriquet of ´The Coughing Major´ following his win in 2001 of the highest prize on the TV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? but later being accused, tried, and found guilty of being guided by coughs coming from an accomplice, Tecwen Whittock. Whittock and Ingram´s wife, Diana (she was cited as the mastermind of the job) were all found guilty of
‘dishonestly procuring Christopher Tarrant to sign a cheque by deception on 10 September 2001’.
The company behind Millionaire?, Celador, also made a documentary about the heist which aired on Easter Monday 2003. A poll taken in the Sun shortly afterwards showed 95% of about a thousand people thought Ingram to have cheated.
But with The Resurrection (for it was also on Easter Monday, 2020, we got the first episode of QUIZ) another poll in that paper showed now only 71% were confident of his guilt. A poll in the Daily Mirror found exactly the same percentage whilst polls on Twitter and an armed forces web site showed even lower support for the guilty verdict.

And many other problems with the prosecution case were mentioned in Bad Show and on QUIZ too.

But there is an entirely separate argument for Charles Ingram to be paid his million pounds, irrespective of whether he received illicit prompts or not. It is an argument we did not include in Bad Show and pertains to open prompting already made by the host.

On March 12th 2003, Christopher John Tarrant told Southwark Crown Court how, when presenting the show, he was under enormous pressure:
“I have developed a strange, impassioned face that hopefully does not give them a clue to whether they are right or wrong. I cannot do that… When you get up to £64,000 and up to £1,000,000, it is absolutely essential. I am very, very aware of the need not to give anything away that might help a contestant."

But that was false testimony.

For in November 1999 Gerry Lennon had faced the question for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds:
"What is a Bichon Frisé?".
He asked the audience. 93% said it was a dog. He then took 50-50 leaving ´Dog´ and ´Wind´. tarrant observed, “You´ve got £125,000 you can walk away”. Lennon replied, “And I´m about 93% myself now.”
He then chose to ring his elder brother, whom Tarrant did not inform about the previous massive audience vote. Upon learning that Gerry had £125,000 he said, “That´s pretty good”.
“That´s no understatement”, Gerry added.
Brother Harry said he thought it was a dog but told him to "Take the money."
“That´s a bit of advice from big brother, I´ll take the money Chris.” The audience groaned.
Tarrant said, “Listen; he´s doing this, not you.”
And THEN he said to the player, "Oh go on!".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZaByRmPX3c
Now it is certainly true that on questions of £64,000 or higher Tarrant has been known to say to a player who admitted (often gratefully!) to being clueless, “Oh go on! Wibble, dibble!”, e.g. Bob Ginger in 2003 and John Gallantry in 2007.
But the frivolity there was indisputable.

This was quite different.

I quite accept that there was nothing nefarious at all in his behaviour. The audience had groaned at Lennon´s decision to stick and, in the same spirit I´m sure, Tarrant just wanted to see the guy continue. Nevertheless, I think the host should have been reprimanded for his blatant advice of “Oh go on!” to Lennon. Perhaps he was.
But Celador passed on their suspicions of skulduggery on Ingram´s part to the police and the CPS then elected to criminally prosecute.
So the game changer is Tarrant denying the prompt UNDER OATH.
For the host to have admitted that he DOES arrogate the right to influence contestants on big money questions would have rendered a continuation of the prosecution of The Millionaire Three simply impossible.

Wouldn´t it?

And Major Ingram would have walked out of court a millionaire.

After the verdict Tarrant said Ingram was "a cad, a bandit, a cheating bastard" and called for his imprisonment whilst also saying how amusing he found it to appear as a witness for the prosecution.

Well, he who laughs last laughs longest.

To mislead a court on a critical point may have irksome consequences as both Lord Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken may attest. I do not now want Mr Tarrant granted the chance to relate at leisure to Mr Lennon what he was about when he prompted him on question thirteen and went on to deny that UNDER OATH. And I especially do not want to have that happen at His Majesty´s leisure.

Gerry Lennon is a prison officer.

Judge not less you be judged (?)

[Chris Goodall]

Any of those FACTS shifted your conclusions, Señor?

Not at all.

The mountain of facts you've assembled there, some of which may even be relevant to the question of Ingram's guilt, is quite enough to cause a reasonable person to guess that he's innocent.

BUT, eighty percent of the time when I guess these things, I'm wrong. So I'm going to change my answer for no reason, and confidently declare that he's guilty. Without any consideration of the position intermediate between those two, which is that I simply don't know.

Does that not seem reasonable?

[James Plaskett]

Any fool could see what he was up to when he changed his answer to his 32K Question. It was obvious why he did that. Listen at 20:40 here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbBSDREP6f8

[Chris Goodall]

I guess we'll never know what would have happened if the major had testified under oath that he could hear an audience gasp while being unaware of any coughing. It would be an interesting strategy. Not inconsistent with cheating, of course. Not even inconsistent with cheating on that particular question. Certainly not inconsistent with conspiring to cheat.

[James Plaskett]

He DID say - when speaking about his answering of the 32K Question - that it was the audience gasp that led to his volte-face.
BUT he did not make out that in declining to earlier commit himself with "Final Answer" he had been deliberately fishing out for their gasp.

Probably thought that not to be the sort of behaviour expected from an Officer and a Gentleman (Don´t cha know!?)
So he was lying.
But NOT CHEATING.

Lifeline Four, that´s all.

[Chris Goodall]

That he could hear an audience gasp so quiet that no-one else has ever heard it, only undermines his statement that

"In the middle of that room, I heard no coughing whatsoever."

[James Plaskett]

If you play that bit on my Podcast Why the coughing major must be paid you will hear TWO references to how audience feedback is quite audible, commonplace and was acted upon by two other players, one of whom had the reaction acknowledged by the host herself.
Those players were Kimberley Collins and Keith Burgess.

[MJMcCready]

The coughing major was as guilty as hell, it's so obvious it's not open to discussion. How profitable writing about it is I don't know but he was clearly guilty.

[Chris Goodall]

No coughing whatsoever, James. Whatsoever.

[MJMcCready]

I will say one thing, he was a good actor.