Quiz show cheat who almost became a millionaire

The former Shropshire schoolboy had just given his 15th correct answer on the quiz show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, scooping the £1 million jackpot. Ingram buried his head in his hands, while his wife Diana, watching in the audience, slid her hands down the side of her face in disbelief.

But the then serving army major never did receive his money. The moment the studio lights went down, questions were being asked about whether Ingram had been cheating. Instead, Ingram, his wife Diana, and their accomplice Tecwen Whittock found themselves in the dock at Southwark Crown Court, where they were all convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud. the trio were all found guilty of one of the most audacious crimes of all time.

What became known as 'the tale of the coughing major' – even though it was never army officer Ingram who was doing the coughing – becomes the subject of a new television drama starting tonight, almost two decades on from the event. Quiz, by James Graham, sees Michael Sheen take on the role of dapper question-master Tarrant, Matthew Macfadyen stars as Ingram, and Sian Clifford as Diana.

It follows on from a West End show also produced by Graham, and like the play the series will ask the audience to consider whether Ingram might actually be innocent.

When Tarrant described Ingram as 'amazing', on the night of the quiz itself in September, 2001, he was already questioning somebody he had written off as 'nice but dim' had managed to pull it off.

The day before, the veteran presenter had watched bemused as Ingram struggled with even the most basic of general knowledge questions.

“I asked him: ‘The Normans, who conquered England in 1066, spoke which language?’," Tarrant recalled.

"He floundered. Was it Danish? Perhaps Norwegian? Probably not German. Or maybe French? After a lot of hesitation, he plumped for French. Which, as any schoolboy knows, is the right answer."

The answer won him £1,000 but his strange behaviour would set a pattern for what was to come.

“That pattern was repeated twice more," said Tarrant. "Total bewilderment followed by a lucky guess.”

By the end of the first day of filming, Ingram had stumbled his way to the £4,000 mark, but had already used two of his three 'lifelines'. The producers did not expect him to get much further.

Ingram's wife Diana had already won £32,000 on the show, and Tarrant said he initially felt sorry for Charles having to follow in her footsteps.

“There was a lot of pressure on him to match his missus, and he didn’t have the brains to do it,” he said.

“My fears for him increased when the questions were still easy ones and the prize money stood at just £1,000."

On the second day of filming, Ingram's behaviour became increasingly erratic. Like the day before, he kept repeating the possible answers, appearing to settle on one of them before suddenly changing his mind completely for no apparent reason. For £32,000, he was asked who recorded the 2000 album Born to Do It, the correct answer being Craig David.

"I think it's A1," Ingram told Tarrant. "I've never heard of Craig David, to be honest. Coldplay I've never heard of. I think I'll go for A1." Then suddenly, without warning or explanation, he decided it was the singer he had never heard of after all.

It later emerged that Ingram, a former pupil of Oswestry School, was getting by with a little help from his friends. As he endlessly repeated all the possible answers to every question, he was waiting to hear a cough from an accomplice in the audience when the correct answer was read out.

Whittock, one of the potential contestants waiting to be called up should he win the 'fastest finger first' round, which decided who appeared in the hotseat, was the man with the apparently bad cough. He had agreed with Ingram beforehand that he would cough when Ingram read out the right answer, and blow his nose to warn him if he was about to answer incorrectly.

Suspicions grew when a sound technician noticed the equipment had been affected by intermittent bursts of interference. The studio manager also reported a member of the audience who was causing constant disruption by getting up to use his mobile phone. The man turned out to be Diana Ingram’s brother.

As the suspicions mounted, broadcast of the show was suspended pending an investigation. In the meantime, Cardiff college lecturer Whittock did actually make it into the hotseat, but walked away with just £1,000 after answering the £8,000 question incorrectly.

During the trial at Southwark Crown Court, Whittock claimed he had suffered from a persistent cough all his life, although it was pointed out that he showed no signs of this when he appeared on the programme. He claimed he avoided coughing by drinking a large amount of water before the show.

The Ingrams were each handed 18-month suspended prison sentences, while Whittock was given a 12-month suspended sentence after being found guilty convicted in 2003. Ingram was forced to resign his commission from the Royal Engineers, and later that year he was also convicted of insurance fraud in an unrelated matter.

Graham's stage play invited people to cast votes on whether they thought the Ingrams were guilty or not, and Ingram later wrote a novel detailing the hardship he and his family went through after the trial.

Tarrant, now 73, has repeatedly said he had little sympathy, and thinks it would be wrong to view Ingram as some sort of modern-day Robin Hood who got one over the establishment.

"He was as guilty as sin," he said.

“Some may feel poor old Charlie Ingram has paid a high price for his ham-fisted attempt to cheat at a quiz game.

“But this was a scheme to defraud a public company out of £1 million.

“Anyone who tried to steal that from a bank would be looking at a long sentence.”