Charles Ingram

For other people named Charles Ingram, see Charles Ingram (disambiguation).

Charles Ingram
Ingram with his wife Diana in 2006
Born	Charles William Ingram (1963-08-06) 6 August 1963 Shardlow, Derbyshire, England
Education	Oswestry School
Alma mater	Kingston University
Occupation(s)	Novelist, army major
Known for	Appearance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and subsequent scandal
Spouse	Diana Ingram ​ (m. 1989)​
Children	3
Military career
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service / branch	British Army
Years of service	1987–2003
Rank	Major
Service number	525791

Charles William Ingram (born 6 August 1963) is an English novelist and former British Army major who gained notoriety for his appearance on the ITV television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? In episodes recorded in September 2001, Ingram correctly answered fifteen questions to win the show's maximum prize of £1 million, becoming the third UK contestant ever to do so. However, he was denied the winnings due to suspicion of cheating.

Following a lengthy trial at Southwark Crown Court, Ingram was convicted on a single count of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception. He was subsequently convicted of an unrelated offence involving insurance fraud in 2003 and ordered to resign his commission as a major by the Army Board.

Early life

Charles Ingram was born on 6 August 1963 in Shardlow, Derbyshire, the son of retired RAF wing commander John Ingram and his wife, theatre set designer Susan Ingram. His father's Wellington bomber, operating with 103 Squadron from RAF Elsham Wolds, had been shot down in late September 1941; he was taken as a prisoner of war while two of his crew were killed.

Ingram's parents divorced when he was young and he spent most of his education years boarding privately at Oswestry School in Oswestry, Shropshire. There he was a member of the Combined Cadet Force and completed the Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award. He went on to obtain a BSc in civil engineering from Kingston University.

Military career

In 1987, Ingram trained for the British Army at Sandhurst and was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Engineers. He was promoted to the rank of captain in 1990 and major in 1995. In 1999, Ingram was sent to Banja Luka in Bosnia for six months on United Nations peacekeeping duties. He graduated from Cranfield University with a master's degree in corporate management in August 2000. He was ordered by the Army Board via letter to resign his commission on 20 August 2003 and to give up his rank of major. It is widely disputed whether or not he was dishonourably discharged.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? scandal

£1 million (15 of 15) – No time limit
A number one followed by one hundred zeros is known by what name?
⬥ A: Googol	⬥ B: Megatron
⬥ C: Gigabit	⬥ D: Nanomole
Ingram's £1 million question

On 9 September 2001, Ingram became a contestant on the ITV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, following his wife Diana and her brother Adrian Pollock, each of whom had won £32,000 as contestants on the show. To prepare, Ingram practised for about twenty minutes per day on a homemade "Fastest Finger First" machine. Ingram got into the "hot seat" but used two lifelines early, ending the day at £4,000 and with only the 50/50 lifeline remaining. The production team doubted he would proceed much further, but he ended up making it all the way to the £1 million jackpot on the second day of recording.

Ingram's £32,000 question was "Who had a hit UK album with Born to Do It released in 2000?" Ingram was unsure, but indicated he thought it was A1. He then used his 50/50 lifeline to eliminate two wrong answers; A1 and Craig David remained. Ingram said he had never heard of Craig David, and nearly locked in A1. Then he said "Eighty percent of the time I'm wrong when I guess ... I'll go Craig David." This was correct, and guaranteed Ingram £32,000 even if he later gave an incorrect answer. Ingram got the next three questions right, and then faced the £500,000 question "Baron Haussmann is best known for his planning of which city?" Ingram said he thought it was Berlin due to the name sounding German. However, he eventually decided on Paris as his final answer. This got him to the million pound question: "A number one followed by one hundred zeros is known by what name?" Ingram initially said he thought it was Nanomole, but "by process of elimination" eventually decided on Googol, which he said he had never heard of. Host Chris Tarrant reminded him that he could simply take the £500,000 and not risk losing £468,000 if his answer was wrong. Ingram chose to play, and thus won the million pound jackpot.

Producers were highly suspicious that Ingram had somehow been given answers. After his win, Ingram’s hair, clothing, and shoes were searched, but nothing incriminating was found. The show's production company, Celador, suspended the jackpot payout to investigate the matter. At the same time, Tarrant overheard that the Ingrams had been arguing, despite Ingram's success, moments before Tarrant joined them in their dressing room for champagne; another member of the production team also noted a similar thought about the couple's behaviour. While reviewing the recording, the production team made a connection between Ingram's answers and coughs coming from one of the waiting contestants, lecturer Tecwen Whittock; in another instance, the coughing came from Ingram's wife while she was in the audience. Based on this evidence, all three were accused of cheating, and the matter handed over to police to investigate further. Whittock and the Ingrams were eventually charged with "procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception".

Trial

Following a trial at Southwark Crown Court lasting four weeks (including jury deliberation for three and a half days), the Ingrams and Whittock were convicted by a 10-1 verdict on 7 April 2003. The three were given prison sentences, suspended for two years—the Ingrams were sentenced to eighteen months; Whittock was sentenced to twelve months—and each fined £15,000 and ordered to pay £10,000 towards prosecution costs. Within two months of the verdict and sentence, the trial's judge ordered the Ingrams to pay additional defence costs, which left them owing a total of £115,000.

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 when 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.

Testimony of Larry Whitehurst

Graham "Larry" Whitehurst, another contestant who had appeared on the show as a Fastest Finger First contestant on four occasions, told the court that he had observed a pattern of coughs from Whittock which he was convinced had helped Ingram. Whitehurst said he knew the answer to the million pound question, and observed Whittock cough as soon as Ingram mentioned "Googol".

Testimony of Tecwen Whittock

Whittock insisted that he had a genuine cough caused by a combination of hay fever and a dust allergy, and that any coughs after correct answers were only a coincidence. 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. Whittock later testified that he drank several glasses of water before he went in front of the cameras. 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.

Davies, the floor manager on Millionaire, 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"— and while Davies described this as "bizarre", Whittock remarked during the trial, "You do not cough into someone's face".

During the trial, Whittock portrayed himself as a "serial quiz show loser" because he had been eliminated in round one of Channel 4's Fifteen to One, had also failed on ITV's The People Versus and had been able to win only an atlas on his appearance on ITV's Sale of the Century. He had also done poorly on Beat the Bong, although he did reach the semi-final stage of the BBC radio quiz show Brain of Britain.

Aftermath

On 19 August 2003, the Army Board ordered Ingram to resign his commission as a major after sixteen years of service, but stated that this would not affect his pension entitlements.

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. 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. Ingram's defence costs were later further reduced to £5,000 on appeal.

Chess grandmaster James Plaskett wrote an essay arguing that no cheating had occurred. In 2006, journalist Jon Ronson, who covered the case at the time for The Guardian, read the essay and began to doubt the defendants' guilt. Ronson, who attended every day of the trial, had observed that the mention of the word "cough" seemed to cause people to cough. Plaskett, who had appeared in the Fastest Finger First round several times before winning £250,000 in January 2006, argued that a correct answer being mentioned might also have been an unconscious trigger for coughs. On the second-to-last question, Whittock was also accused of having coughed at the wrong time and swiftly following that up with a smothered "no". However, Plaskett, who had sat in that very same seat, said that it was common for waiting contestants to whisper "no" when the contestant favored an incorrect answer.

After Millionaire

Books

Since leaving the Army, Ingram has written two novels: The Network (2006) and Deep Siege (2007).

TV appearances

Following his appearance on Millionaire, Ingram has appeared on various other television shows, including Channel 4's The Games, the BBC's The Weakest Link, and Channel 4's Wife Swap, featuring alongside his wife in the latter two.

On The Weakest Link, Anne Robinson jokingly referred to the "dashing young major with a throat infection", regarding his Millionaire appearance. A question was also posed concerning, "In classical music what 'C' is the act of throat clearing which members of the audience are asked to try to avoid?", the answer being "coughing".

Ingram also narrowly lost to Paul Daniels on the short-lived Channel 5 game show 19 Keys in November 2003.

Insurance fraud case

In late 2003, Ingram and his wife were charged with further fraud offences. On 28 October, 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. However a spokesman for Wiltshire Constabulary, David Taylor, said those offences were "not fraud". The court was told that Ingram had been a "habitual claimant" with Norwich Union after suffering "unfortunate" losses of private possessions.

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.

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 [Ingram had] brought upon [himself] and [his] dire financial state" and rejected an alternative option of community service after Ingram told a probation officer he feared other criminals would bully him.

In popular culture

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. The play transferred to the West End, playing at the Noël Coward Theatre from 31 March 2018 to 16 June 2018. In 2019, Graham adapted his play into a serial drama for ITV that was broadcast in April 2020 in three parts. Ingram was portrayed in the series by Matthew Macfadyen. The series also aired on AMC and BBC America in the United States in June 2020 and on RTÉ One in Ireland in February 2021.

Personal life

Ingram met Diana Pollock while she was training to be a teacher at Barry College in Wales. The two became engaged during his first posting with the Royal Engineers in Germany. They were married in November 1989 and have three children.

In 2010, Ingram lost three toes on his left foot in an accident involving a lawnmower.

See also

• Martin Flood
• Michael Larson

External links

• Charles Ingram at IMDb