Tarrant: Show winner's behaviour 'extraordinary'

Game show host Chris Tarrant told a court today of an army major’s “extraordinary, exciting behaviour” as he answered his way to the top prize on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

The 56-year-old entertainer admitted he found it “very hard to follow”.

But he was “elated” when Charles Ingram managed to answer the £1 million-winning 15th question correctly.

He told London’s Southwark Crown Court that if he had suspected the father-of-three had not been “playing by the rules”, he would never have signed the seven-figure cheque.

The quiz master, who for once found himself having to answer the questions, told the eight-woman, four-man jury trying the Royal Engineers officer, his wife and a college lecturer for deception: “If there was anything wrong, I certainly would not sign it.”

After the officer left the set with the cheque, Mr Tarrant visited him in his dressing room and told him: "Congratulations, fantastic."

He returned later, “once recording for the night had been finished”, to spend a little more time with him and his wife.

Nicholas Hilliard, prosecuting, asked: “So far as the atmosphere then was concerned, did you detect anything untoward?”

Mr Tarrant: “Not from them. No, not at all. They seemed as normal as people who had just won £1 million would be in that situation. They did seem fine.”

Ingram, and his 38-year-old nursery nurse wife, Diana, both of High Street, Easterton, Wiltshire, and Tecwen Whittock, 53, who lives at Heol-y-Gors, Whitchurch, Cardiff, and is head of business studies at Pontypridd College, each deny a single charge of “procuring a valuable security by deception” on September 10, 2001.

The crown has claimed that Whittock used a system of coughing to alert the major to the correct answers.

Wearing a charcoal grey suit and a buttoned-up, red polo shirt, Mr Tarrant was asked whether he noticed any coughing during the major’s appearance.

“Not specifically because there is just so much going on at the time, loud applause ... extraordinary behaviour, exciting behaviour, very hard to follow behaviour.

“When you get to that sort of money, I am very focused, there was an awful lot going on,” he told the prosecutor.

Mr Tarrant went on to explain that while he had a lot of information on a screen in front of him, including the question and the four possible answers, he had no idea which one was correct.

“Only when we get to the specific moment, ’No that is my final answer’, at that point on my screen, a very small signal comes up whether they are right or not, and that is when I am absolutely certain whether that is the right answer.”

He told the court that he was “very aware” of the need not to give anything away that might help a contestant.

“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.

“But sometimes, I am saying (to myself): ’Please, please give me the right answer’.”

At that point, Judge Geoffrey Rivlin, quipped to laughter: “I think I know what that face is like.”