Major ‘tense and unhappy’ after winning millionaire quiz

AN army major appeared “very tense” and unhappy minutes after winning the top prize on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, a court heard yesterday.

At one point Charles Ingram who was subsequently accused of "cheating his way" to the seven-figure fortune with the help of an accomplice's strategic coughing even turned on a researcher who tried to lighten the atmosphere in his dressing room, it was claimed.

"He ... raised his arms up in the air and said 'don't start, I have got things to do. You don't understand'," claimed Eve Winstanley.

"Then he told me to 'get out'."

The Royal Engineers officer, whose wife, another alleged accomplice, also appeared "agitated", insisted he wanted to be "left alone".

"Mr Ingram then moved towards me, which indicated to me that he wanted me to leave the room. So I did," she told London's Southwark Crown Court.

Nicholas Hilliard, prosecuting, asked Ms Winstanley: "How did you feel about the way Mr Ingram had spoken to you?" "I was shocked really," she replied. "I had never been spoken to by a contestant like that before."

In the dock with Ingram, 39, is his 38-year-old nursery nurse wife Diana, both of 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.

They each deny a single charge alleging they "procured a valuable security by deception" by dishonestly getting game show host Christopher Tarrant to sign the £1 million cheque on September 10, 2001.

The Crown claims the illicit coughs came from Whittock while he was one of the programme's "fastest finger first" contestants and sitting just 10 feet from the major.

It says that after Tarrant asked a question, Ingram would repeat the four possible answers on offer and, as he did so, was allegedly led in most cases to the correct one by the lecturer's apparent throat problem.

Ms Winstanley, the second witness to be called by the Crown, said that although she had now left the show, she had taken part in some 70 episodes by the time Ingram made it to the "hot seat".

She explained she had first met Ingram and his wife a former £32,000 winner on the popular ITV programme, recorded at Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire the day before he became the show's third millionaire.

On that occasion, when he won £4,000 before becoming a so-called "roll-over contestant", Mrs Ingram's brother Marcus Powell accompanied them.