Charles Ingram

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Ingram with his wife Diana

Charles William Ingram (born August 6, 1963 in Shardlow , Derbyshire ) is a retired British major who was featured as a cheater in 2001 on the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? got known. After the scandal, which went down as Major Fraud or Coughing Scandal ("cough scandal") in the history of the television program, he was discharged from the Army and worked briefly as a writer.

Life

Charles Ingram comes from the village of Shardlow in the central English county of Derbyshire . He attended the renowned Oswestry School in Shropshire . In 1986 he was accepted as a cadet of the Sandhurst Military Academy as an officer on probation in the force of the Royal Engineers. After promotion to captain (1990) and Major (1995) he served in Northern Ireland in 2000 and the six months from February NATO - peacekeeping mission in Bosnia . At the time of his quiz show cheating, he was living in a country house in Easterton, Wiltshire, with his wife Diana, a kindergarten teacher, and three daughters together .

After retiring from the military, Ingram tried his hand at writing and published his first novel, The Network, in April 2006. His second thriller, Deep Siege , came out in October 2007. He then helped his wife sell handmade jewelry at craft stalls.

scandal

Appearance in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire ?

Great notoriety gained Ingram as part of the popular ITV - quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Before him, his wife and brother- in -law had already participated in the show and won £ 32,000 each . On September 9, 2001, he found himself in the studio to record the program and, after the selection task, made it to the “hot seat” across from presenter Chris Tarrant . Answering the first seven questions (up to and including 4000 pounds) was inconspicuous, but Ingram needed two jokers. Then the final signal sounded and the recording was continued on the following day. On day two, the major gradually worked his way up by apparently guessing the right solutions after sometimes long deliberations. He struggled with questions ten (32,000 pounds) and 14 (500,000 pounds) in particular, but ultimately made the right decision. In the end, he was the third candidate in the history of the British edition to win the top prize of one million pounds - around 1.63 million euros at the time of recording . Tarrant congratulated Ingram on saying he was "the most incredible contestant" he had ever played with.

During the recording, employees of the program had doubts about the candidate, which is why Ingram was informed by the manager of the "irregularities" by telephone the next day. He was accused of cheating together with his wife sitting in the audience and another candidate named Tecwen Whittock. The latter in particular is said to have repeatedly signaled correct answers to the major by incorrectly coughing while he was speaking them out loud. Whittock took a seat in the middle immediately after Ingram, but only earned £ 1,000. Due to the allegations and collision with the terrorist attacks in New York , the program was initially not broadcast. The payment of the prize money has also been suspended. In November 2001, Charles and Diana Ingram and their alleged accomplices Whittock, a university professor from Cardiff , were finally arrested.

Trial and sentencing

The five-week fraud trial took place in March and April 2003. With the help of an audio expert, the prosecution was able to identify significant coughs on the tape recordings of the studio microphones in connection with correct answers from Major 19. All came from the direction of Tecwen Whittocks. Particularly noticeable, however, is a clearly audible “No!” In combination with a cough, which should dissuade Ingram from giving the wrong answer to question 14. The police assumed that the Ingrams had initially considered a more complex plan with pagers , but ultimately rejected it. Immediately after the broadcast, the couple allegedly had a heated argument, which fueled speculation that Charles should have left the headquarters with a less noticeable, lower profit. The court saw private debt of £ 50,000 as the motive for the fraud. All three vehemently denied the allegations. The major even filed a civil lawsuit against the broadcaster and claimed his main prize. Co-defendant Whittock, who had participated in various quiz formats several times without success and who knew Diana Ingram from that scene, stated that he had never seen her husband before. The court eventually sentenced both Ingrams to a two-year suspended sentence and a fine of £ 15,000 each and a legal cost share of £ 10,000 each. Whittock also received a two-year suspended sentence and a slightly lighter fine. The judge, who spoke of a "shoddy schoolboy trick", only refrained from imprisonment in order not to separate the parents from their children.

As a result, Ingram had to leave the Army at the end of August after 17 years of service. He was retired, but was allowed to retain his rank and pension entitlement. He lost his house in Easterton to the Army, to which he had leased it in the meantime. He was also faced with additional financial problems after a £ 32,000 insurance fraud after he claimed antique furniture was stolen from his home while on a family vacation.

reception

Under the title Millionaire: A Major Fraud , a feature-length television documentary was created that was first broadcast after the trial in spring 2003. Chris Tarrant as well as members of the production team and other eyewitnesses have their say. The coughs appear particularly loud to the viewer because they are reproduced acoustically isolated. With 17 million TV viewers, it had the highest ratings of any non-entertainment show nationwide since Princess Diana's funeral almost six years earlier.

In the years that followed, the incident, which one writer called "grotesque in its stupidity, tragic in its context and hilarious in its execution", received repeated coverage in the British press. Not least because of further television appearances, Charles Ingram found its way into the TV folklore as a "coughing major" ("coughing major"). He has appeared in Wife Swap , the cooking show Hell's Kitchen with Gordon Ramsay and the morning magazine This Morning , in which he underwent reincarnation therapy. Alongside this, voices doubting Ingram's guilt rose. In 2015, two journalists published a book in which they worked out the candidate's appearance in the quiz show in detail and made some arguments for his innocence. For example, a manager appeared as a witness for the prosecution who was not in the studio during Ingram's performance and the recording was only handed over to the police after almost a year. They also bring an accomplice Whittock's chronic respiratory disease into play and call his presence as a candidate on the same show a “complete coincidence”.

Playwright James Graham adapted the story for a play that premiered at the Minerva Theater in Chichester in November 2017 . Graham called the story of middle-class people trying to steal a million pounds with questions and coughing the "most British crime ever" and tried to wrap it up in an Ocean's Eleven- style thriller . After positive reviews, Quiz celebrated its premiere in March 2018 at the Noël Coward Theater in London's West End . A special feature of the performance is that the audience is asked twice to vote on Ingram's guilt via keypad. Charles Ingram himself, who for legal reasons was not allowed to participate in the production, praised the piece in the highest tones and was pleased to see the case "back in the spotlight". In an interview with the Daily Mail , host Chris Tarrant warned against mixing the play with the facts, calling Ingram "guilty as sin".

In 2019 the TV channels ITV and AMC announced that they would film the case together in a British-American co-production as a three-part miniseries.

bibliography

Literature and Adaptations

  • Millionaire: A Major Fraud. Documentary for ITV , 2003.
  • Bob Woffind & James Plaskett: Bad Show: The Quiz, The Cough, The Millionaire Major. Bojangles Books, Norfolk 2015, ISBN 978-0-9930755-2-0 , 396 pp.
  • James Graham: Quiz. Stage play, 2017.

Web links

Commons : Charles Ingram  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mark Andrews: Who Want to be a Millionaire scandal: Tarrant says major was never a 'victim'. Shropshire Star, April 11, 2018, accessed January 20, 2019 .
  2. ^ Corps of Royal Engineers. In: The London Gazette , Supplement 50733 (December 1, 1986), p. 15537. Online , accessed January 20, 2019.
  3. ^ Promotions - Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers. In: The London Gazette , Supplement 52131 (May 8, 1990), p. 8819. Online , accessed January 20, 2019.
  4. ^ Promotions - Corps of Royal Engineers. In: The London Gazette , Supplement 54173 (October 2, 1995), p. 13316. Online , accessed January 20, 2019.
  5. ↑ Jeevan Vasagar: Guilty: trio who cheated their way to a million. The Guardian , April 8, 2003, accessed January 20, 2019 .
  6. ^ The major behind the sting. BBC , April 8, 2003, accessed January 20, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b c Sean O'Neill: Guilty, but 'Millionaire' cheats escape jail. The Telegraph , April 8, 2003, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  8. ^ A b Levi Winchester: 'Coughing Major' was innocent of cheating on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, says new book. Express , January 17, 2015, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Coughed millions in profit. Der Standard , March 7, 2003, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  10. ↑ a b c d Millionaire: A Major Fraud. TV documentary, ITV , first broadcast on April 22, 2003 (English).
  11. ↑ a b c Cheating to win £ 1m. BBC , April 7, 2003, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Major arrested in 'Millionaire' cough inquiry. The Telegraph , November 23, 2001, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  13. ^ A b Paul Bilton: cough for the main prize. Neue Zürcher Zeitung , May 4, 2003, accessed on January 19, 2019 .
  14. ^ A b c Angus Harrison: Celebrating 15 Years Since the Coughing Major: The Greatest Scandal in TV History. Vice , September 9, 2016, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Millionaire cheat sacked by Army. BBC , July 24, 2003, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  16. ↑ a b Tom Powell: Coughing major Charles Ingram hails 'extremely courageous' new play about Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? scandal. Evening Standard , April 17, 2018, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Jon Ronson : Are the Millionaire three innocent? The Guardian , July 17, 2006, accessed January 19, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Steven McIntosh: Millionaire cough scandal: 'The most British crime of all time'. BBC , April 12, 2018, accessed January 20, 2019 .
  19. ^ DWDL de GmbH: Miniseries about cough fraud in the British "WWM". Retrieved August 17, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Ingram, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ingram, Charles William (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British major and impostor
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Shardlow , Derbyshire