Quiz show cheat may be forced to work as farmhand and live in caravan

THE Army major who cheated his way to the top prize on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? told yesterday how he had lost his home and his job – and could be forced to work as a farmhand living in a caravan.

Charles Ingram said he and his wife, Diana, faced a “bleak, bleak future” after being convicted of setting up a scam to use an accomplice’s coded coughs to signal correct answers on the game show.

In an interview with a Sunday newspaper, the father-of-three also claimed to have been close to suicide.

He only ditched a plan to take an overdose after receiving a text message from one of his daughters moments before he was going to swallow pills prescribed for depression and anxiety.

The Ingrams, both 39, from Easterton, Wiltshire, were convicted at London’s Southwark Crown Court on Monday along with college lecturer Tecwen Whittock.

They were each fined £15,000, ordered to pay £10,000 costs and received 18-month prison sentences, suspended for two years.

Whittock was sentenced to 12 months in prison, also suspended for two years, and was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £7,500 in costs.

Ingram, a Royal Engineer once earmarked for promotion and a veteran of the Balkans conflict, told the newspaper he was being administratively discharged from the Army.

His wife was also to lose her job as a nursery nurse.

“The impact this has had on our lives has been catastrophic,” he said.

“My father, John, agreed to remortgage his house to help fund the case and now he faces the prospect of losing it and being made homeless,” he added.

The legal costs, on top of crippling debts of more than £50,000 the couple had run up before the trial, have led to financial ruin. In two months they will move out of their rented five-bedroom home and into a caravan, possibly on a farm.

“I am prepared to take work on a farm to pay the rent,” Ingram said.

But despite his downfall, Ingram still maintains his innocence and insists he heard no coughs coming from Whittock: “You don’t hear anything up there. It’s very intense,” he said.

When he first saw the incriminating tapes of the show, which would later be played to the jury, he realised his prospects were bleak.

“I could see the deep concern on the faces of my legal team. For the first time I realised that, with the right spin, the prosecution could actually win the case.”