Strategic coughing helped major to win a million, court told

AN army major used an accomplice’s strategic coughing to “cheat his way” to the top prize in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, a court was told yesterday.

As the questions from game show host Chris Tarrant grew in difficulty and financial promise, Charles Ingram used the coughs to climb to the seven- figure fortune, London's Southwark Crown Court was told.

The vocal signals were carefully timed to tell the 39-year-old soldier which of the four possible answers was the right one, said Nicholas Hilliard, prosecuting.

A video of his apparent success heard him say at one point he was relying on a particular "strategy and counter-strategy".

But once the £1 million cheque had been handed over several questions later, Mr Tarrant said: "I have no idea how you got there. You went to hell and back out there ... I have no idea what your strategy was."

Ingram and his nursery nurse wife Diana, 38, of The Grange, High Street, Easterton, Wiltshire, and Tecwen Whittock, 53, of Heol-y-Gors, Whitchurch, Cardiff, who is head of Business Studies at

Pontypridd College, south Wales, each deny a single charge alleging they "procured a valuable security by

deception".

It claims "with a view to gain for yourselves or with intent to cause loss to another, dishonestly procured Christopher Tarrant to sign a cheque for £1m by deception, namely by falsely representing that Charles Ingram did not receive any assistance on 10th September 2001 when answering questions on the television show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?".

In a day-long opening address, Mr Hilliard told what is expected to be a four-week trial, it was the Crown's case that the Royal Engineers major had "cheated his way" to the fortune.

The method, he claimed, was simple. After each question was asked, Ingram would repeat aloud the various options and in most cases would be told which one to choose with a couple of coughs immediately afterwards.

Mr Hilliard alleged that not only had tests indicated these coughs came from the area where Whittock was sitting, but other audience members around him recalled that at the time Ingram was in the "hot seat" he seemed to have a persistent throat problem.

But that difficulty, Mr Hilliard said, disappeared when the college lecturer one of a number of so-called "fastest finger" contestants himself won an initial qualifying round in the studio to try his luck for the top prize. But when it was his turn to answer Mr Tarrant's questions not a single cough was heard from him, Mr Hilliard said.

In the event, father-of-three Whittock came away with just £1,000 after falling foul of a cookery question and insisting that Greek keftedes, or meatballs, were sweet pastries.