Quiz (2020) s01e03 Episode Script
Episode 3
1
Hello.
Oh!
Hello.
Hi, I'm here to take the test.
You want to take the Mensa test?
Yes.
You?
Me, yes. Anyone can, can't they?
£40, please.
To be accepted into Mensa,
you have to qualify in the top
two percentile of IQ in the country.
Starts in five minutes.
Fill in this form
and head through there.
HE CLEARS HIS THROA
After the Major's performance
that second night,
you told police
you heard the Ingrams arguing.
Yes. I remember it very clearly.
After all, it was so, like, odd.
I mean, you'd be happy,
wouldn't you,
if you'd just become millionaires?
No, I'm sorry, but it's just
so obvious, the signals!
We'll talk later!
Well, that's what I heard.
I reckon, I know you haven't asked,
but I reckon the plan was for him
to stop a few questions earlier.
So there wouldn't be so much, um,
attention.
But he couldn't help himself.
And she might have been
annoyed at him.
Because well, look where we are.
The memory's a funny thing,
isn't it?
An incredible feat of engineering.
It sits inside
the medial temporal lobe.
And its most impressive function
is its filing system.
It's better than anything
a super computer could do.
Another of my favourite facts,
given that that's what this trial
is all about,
right answers, wrong answers.
Knowledge.
Truth is that
when we're remembering something
..we're not actually
recalling the original event.
What we're doing is remembering
the last time we remembered it.
So we are constantly
wiping our pasts
and editing together a new one.
One that can make sense to us now,
in the present.
All memories are therefore,
by definition
..a lie. They change.
We change them.
Which isn't a crime, a conspiracy.
Just
..human nature.
We can project guilt, say,
back onto an event that was in fact
perfectly innocent.
I'm sorry, but it's really bad.
The signal's, um
We'll talk later!
I am asking you all
to try and resist
a more entertaining falsehood
in favour of
a less extraordinary truth.
That Major Ingram simply knew
the answers to those questions.
And that's why he got them right.
OK, let's go.
Diana?
We should tell you, we have taken in
two other parties for questioning.
Your brother, Mrs Ingram,
and another contestant
in the studio.
Another conte? Why? Who?
Here's a transcript of your
appearance, provided by Celador.
It shows, quite clearly,
moments where a cough can be heard,
and then you, Charles,
choosing a different answer.
Why did you
change your mind so often?
HE GUFFAWS
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm ju
I'm just sort of hovering above
all this looking down,
seeing how absurd it all is.
It's a game show.
This isn't a laughing matter,
Major Ingram, it's a million pounds.
Your change of answer?
Have you ever seen the show?
That's what makes the show, that's
what the audience want to watch,
that's what the producers want.
It's the the, um
the the the
Tension.
..drama. The tension. Exactly.
Mrs Ingram.
The book you're writing with Adrian
details ways of,
at the very least, bending the rules
or in some cases circumventing
Improving your chances, that's all.
I have to say,
and please don't take offence,
it wasn't the most gripping
read of my life.
Well, it's not for people who
Do you know,
I do take some offence, actually.
Presumably you've benefitted
from this manual, Charles?
I haven't, I haven't read
I haven't actually
got through it yet.
Do you know who Tecwen Whittock is?
No.
You have no idea
your wife telephoned this man
on several occasions,
including the night before
and the morning of your
second appearance on the show,
at which he was also present?
He's just a man, a fan of the show.
Who just happened to be
a Fastest Finger First contestant
on the same show?
A show where coughing was heard
on occasions that correlate
with moments that you, Charles,
changed your mind?
How long has this
relationship with
It's not a relationship! It was
..contact with someone who under
Who was just a fan of the show.
And I know you might think
that's stupid or boring or silly,
but I don't care.
It's not bloody illegal, is it?
We just
We just liked something
a lot for a bit. That's all.
Oh, my God.
PRESS CLAMOUR
Can you park as close as you can,
please?
Diana.
Were you cheating?
Did you cheat?
Diana? Di
Can you step away
from the house, please?
I'm not I'm not sure where
the law is on this, but I don't
Cheat! Cheat!
Get away from the house, please.
How they even got here,
I mean, who told them?
It's a nightmare.
This is a nightmare, isn't it?
I mean, they They actually think
we did it, don't they?
They're looking at all the pieces
and putting them together like a
You know, like that man that you
you called, right?
On your phone. Oh, my God,
on the night of the show!
I mean, they have that on record.
I don't "know him" know him,
Charles.
What they were suggesting, implying.
I've never spent any
actual time with him. Adrian did.
Oh, Adrian! Of course!
It's Adrian, always!
You follow the smoke
and you follow the sound of screams
and there he is, and there you are,
in your little little
What? What?
..family thing.
And I didn't even want to
go on the bloody show!
I just got sucked into it.
Why didn't you tell me you were
having conversations with him?
I thought you were chatting
with him. I thought it was just
It was just a phone call. They don't
know what we were talking about.
It could have been anything.
All right, let's try this, OK?
I'm the prosecuting lawyer, right?
And I'm asking you,
"Mrs Ingram, this man,
"who your husband had
barely any idea
"of the extent of the contact
you had with him,
"what did you speak about
that night?"
I'd just say that we were
both in groups of fans,
and he was on the show the next day,
so why wouldn't I call him?
Because it's about perception,
Diana.
It's about how it looks.
And how does it look?
What are you saying,
and why are you saying it like that?
Because I'm angry! I'm angry!
And not saying it, it's the
bloody policeman who's saying it.
Saying it right
Saying it right in front of me.
And in front of the other
..in front of the other policeman.
My
That my wife
I mean, have you
Do you have any idea how that feels?
What they were
implying and suggesting?
Are you asking me if I..?
Yeah, why not?
I mean, you love questions.
Well, there are some things
There are some questions
you should just know the answer to.
Major Ingram, Mrs Ingram.
Oh How did you guess?
Oh, I don't need to guess,
your faces are in all the papers.
Come in. Come in.
Now, do you want a tea, coffee?
Vodka?
THEY CHUCKLE
I was kidding.
Unless of course you do,
in which case, I wouldn't judge.
Um, you were recommended to us
by Philip Jones in Reading.
But we we never thought
a high-profile barrister
would touch our case with a barge
pole, because Well, given that
Oh, given that your trial's
already begun in the papers.
Yeah.
And the press.
Yes, well, if I represent you,
we're gonna have to fight this
sort of thing every step of the way.
It's new state of play.
What's the new state of play?
Justice as entertainment.
How the police
communicate with the press.
How the press
communicate with the police.
I don't suppose you think
it was a coincidence
that reporters were there
only minutes after you were charged?
Following your, er,
did I get this right?
The "dawn raid" on your property?
It's a form of arrest
that's normally associated
with murderers and paedophiles.
The narrative of your guilt
is already being written
by forces far beyond your control.
Now, I would be happy
to represent you if you want,
because,
and forgive the presumption,
I have already started looking
into your case in some detail and
..Major Ingram, Mrs Ingram
I think something here
really stinks.
Secrets To Help You Win
At Millionaire, by Diana Ingram.
The things we missed.
We pull on this one tiny thread
and what unravels
is a whole bloody world of
God, we were stupid.
Not stupid, trusting. That's all.
Liddiment says he never wants to see
another "effing middle-class wanker"
on the show ever again.
What are they doing?
Parents verses kids at
physical and mental agility games.
That's the worst idea
I've ever heard.
It's new ideas.
Well, Millionaire
won't last forever.
Well, we're on the front page
of every newspaper in the world.
It might.
An Army Major, his wife,
and a college lecturer
have gone on trial
NEWS REPORTS BEGIN TO OVERLAP
The production staff
became suspicious after they noticed
his answers appeared to follow
coughs from another contestant.
PRESS CLAMOUR
Oh, hello. I believe
we're charged with co-conspiracy.
It's nice to meet you both
at last.
Snacks? Really?
Yeah, why not?
God, I love
a good ITV courtroom drama.
Where's Paul?
So, 19 coughs that coincide
with the Major changing his mind
or deciding to answer.
All picked up by your mics,
and coming from where?
Er, they were coming from
the Fastest Finger seats.
Where Mr Whittock was sat.
The man whom Diana Ingram spoke to
the previous evening.
Paying particular attention now
to cough number 14, then.
"Who had a hit UK album with
Born To Do It, released in 2000?
"Coldplay. Toploader.
A1. Craig David".
In case you don't know, I certainly
didn't, the answer's Craig David.
Ingram:
"I think it's A1"
But it could be Toploader.
Which is also something to do with
a barrel on a rifle.
LAUGHTER
"I've never heard of Craig David."
And take us through
what we can see here.
Yeah, she appears to be looking over
to the Fastest Finger First seat
where Mr Whittock is.
Diana Ingram, here. Looking over
at Tecwen Whittock, here.
Any coughing at this point?
No, that's, that's part of
the problem, see, Mr Whittock,
or whoever has been coughing,
isn't coughing at this point.
Perhaps, given pop culture tends not
to be a strongest of category for,
um, these kinds of people, er,
maybe he doesn't know the answer.
Meanwhile, Ingram is all set
to plump for the wrong answer.
I think I'm gonna go with A1.
And pause.
Mrs Ingram
looks up in that direction
several times at this point.
What's up there?
So we have these monitors
facing the audience,
so they can watch
what the cameras are recording.
Which means presumably
those monitors occasionally display
Mrs Ingram being filmed? She can
see when she herself is on camera?
Yes. Although that's only when the
mixer cuts to her for the monitors.
She's always being filmed. Hence
why we have this footage of her.
Ah, so,
would someone not au fait with the
inner workings of television editing
perhaps assume that when they are
not on the monitors above them,
they are not being filmed?
After all,
here we have Diana Ingram,
her husband hovering
over the wrong answer,
looking at Tecwen Whittock,
who isn't coughing
on the correct answer,
checking the monitors
to see if she is being filmed,
before this happens.
SHE COUGHS
LAUGHTER IN THE COURTROOM
Now, is this the first and only
time that Diana Ingram coughed?
Yes.
At a moment when the phantom cougher
is no longer "helping".
Regardless, moments later,
the Major reverses his position.
You know, when I'm at home,
um, and I'm practising,
you know, I guess
I guess wrong 80% of the time.
ON-SCREEN LAUGHTER
So
I think I'm gonna go with
Craig David.
LAUGHTER IN COURTROOM
And if that wasn't exactly subtle -
watch this. The piece de resistance!
For £500,000
"Baron Haussmann is best known
for his planning of which city?
I think it's Berlin.
ON-SCREEN COUGH THAT RESEMBLES "NO"
LAUGHTER IN COURTROOM
Your interpretation of that,
Mr Duff?
There is no interpretation.
Someone says "no"
on the wrong answer.
Thank you. Mrs Woodley will now ask
you some questions for the defence.
Hello, Kevin.
Hi.
That tape we were watching.
It was given the name Tape G?
So presumably there were
other tapes, earlier tapes.
A, B, C, D, E, F?
Er, yeah, sure, as we kept finding
new evidence with the police.
So help us understand
what we were watching.
That was edited together
by yourself?
The plaintiffs. Celador.
Not the police,
not an independent body?
Well, we've had to find a way
to show the police,
and then you, what, you know
what happened.
Thank you, Mr Duff.
Mr Whitehurst.
You were a Fastest Finger First
contestant on the Major's show.
And yet you were the only one who
didn't stand to applaud when he won.
Why?
I'd spotted what was going on.
I knew all of the answers, you see.
And on the millionaire question,
and as soon as Ingram said "googol",
I knew it was "googol",
I had Whittock in my eye and I said,
"Don't you dare," and he did.
He coughed.
HE COUGHS
Plain as day. No question.
Mr Whitehurst.
You didn't formally
raise your suspicions
until after you'd read the story
in the press.
And then when you wrote
to the producers,
but received no reply,
you went to the press yourself.
I thought it important.
If I was the only one who'd spotted
Mr Whittock coughing.
You said it was as plain as day,
no question.
But in your original statement
you said,
"It is possible that what I saw
"was just an amazing set
of coincidences,"
and that, "The possibility remains
"that I witnessed
no criminal behaviour"
What changed since then to make you
so absolutely certain here today?
Watch the tape!
I'm sat not clapping.
Why, if I didn't know?
Because Fastest Finger First
contestants share a grievance,
don't they, quite often,
in the bar after the show?
About the behaviour of a certain
kind of contestant in the chair?
What do you mean, sorry?
Talkers.
People who take forever
to answer a question.
Thereby denying you the chance
of getting into the seat yourself?
Might that not have created
a certain kind of
arms-folded annoyance?
I object to that, Your Honour.
Okeydokey. Withdrawn.
No further questions.
In the days leading up to the show,
Mrs Ingram engaged in a peculiar
pattern of phone calls
to four particular numbers,
in rotation.
It turns out
these were phone pagers.
We consider this to be the way
they may have tried to cheat
on that first night.
The pagers could have been strapped
to parts of the Major's body.
Buzz the left leg for A,
the right leg for B, and so on.
But Mrs Ingram couldn't
be calling pagers on the night,
she was on camera in the audience.
No. But there was someone else
in the studio that night.
So that
HE COUGHS
Excuse me.
So what you are saying
is that plan failed
because Mr Pollock
was unable to call on his phone.
Explaining, perhaps, why the Major
didn't do well on night one.
And yet, on night two,
he came back a genius.
The night Mr Whittock was there
with his tickly cough.
What's the normal procedure
when investigating a more,
I suppose, self-evident crime?
Say, where there is a body at the
scene, and a murder weapon present.
Well, you establish
the cause of death,
bag up the weapon as evidence
to test for fingerprints.
So at what point here did you
"bag up" the evidence.
In this case, a tape recording.
Did you seize it straight away?
Well, no. The, er, the show
kept the tape, because
well, to use your metaphor,
they needed to add
the fingerprints to it.
Not add them, I mean find them.
The coughs.
So you allowed the murder weapon
to stay with those
making the accusation of murder?
I object.
What is being suggested here?
Some kind of conspiracy?
Not conspiracy,
merely that the sequence
in which the evidence was gathered
in this unusual case was not normal.
Normally when a crime is committed,
the evidence
is gathered from the scene,
and the police investigate
to find the culprits.
But in this instance,
you began with the alleged culprits,
who everyone told you
were oddballs
MULTIPLE COUGHS AROUND COURTROOM
..based on a feeling.
And then worked backwards
COUGHS CONTINUE
JUDGE: I must call for quiet.
Everyone who has a cough,
please go outside.
DS Ferguson? Is that?
COUGHING CONTINUES
Members of the jury, please!
If I may be allowed to finish
JUDGE BANGS GAVEL
Order! Order!
Or I shall
HE COUGHS
..I shall have to
suspend the session.
I'm sorry. It's just
the pantomime of it all.
I'm embarrassed sometimes,
really am.
No. Ignore it. We do.
It's not going that well, is it?
It's all right.
A game of two halves.
Wait till we get a chance
to fight back.
People are laughing at us.
I really don't know what's worse,
people thinking we're criminals
or idiots.
There are worse things
to be accused of.
Let me ask you this, then.
Why haven't you even mentioned that?
Hm? Your sodding badge,
you think I hadn't noticed?
You've got the press screaming
questions at you day in, day out,
which our opponents are happily
answering to guide the narra
I don't want to boast about it,
do I?
I don't It's there,
for all to see. I do it for my
for myself,
as much as anything else.
PASSER-BY COUGHING
Yes, all right, hilarious, coughing!
You get the Nobel Prize for
comedy.
I don't actually think there is a
Nobel Prize for comedy,
yes, thank you.
Right.
Come on.
Mummy and Daddy
finished early today,
so we decided we'd pick you up
instead of Grandad.
That's nice, isn't it?
SHE SIGHS
We thought
maybe we'd have pizzas tonight, yum.
SHE YELPS
Who are they?
Are they friends of yours?
Not any more.
It's going to be all right.
I promise.
Some silly people just think
Mummy and Daddy did that
silly thing, that's all.
Well, did you?
We might need to consider taking
them out of school for a bit maybe.
I don't know, it's..
Then again, if the worst happens
..we might need to make plans for,
er
..for prison.
Then we need to think
PHONE RINGS
Adrian.
Oh, leave it. Please. Leave
Hello?
Hey. Hi. You OK?
I just wanted to say hello, really.
I'm fine. Can I call you
'It's just a quick thing, really.'
Er, cos the publisher's
been on at me, you know. Again
And, er, look, if you do get off,
and you never know, then
I'm in court every day, Adrian,
I can't think about the book.
OK, OK, OK, I know.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know.
Let's just talk tomorrow.
No, just stop, just stop.
I just need some space, please.
Enough.
Um, can I
Can I bring you a cup of tea?
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry, Charles.
No. No, no, no. No, don't do that.
Don't do that.
Thanks, but no. It's all right.
It's both of us in this together.
That stupid show!
Are we going to go to jail?
No.
I don't know.
But I know that I love you.
No No asking the audience,
or phoning a friend, I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
PRESS: Mr Tarrant! Mr Tarrant!
THEY CLAMOUR
I swear by almighty God
that the evidence I shall give
shall be the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth.
Mr Tarrant,
a pleasure to have you here today.
Well, it's a pleas
Well, it's not a pleasure,
but thank you.
How would you rate the Major's
performance on that first night?
Has anyone done worse? Has anyone,
say, got the first question wrong?
Uh, no. not here.
Think someone did once in America.
LAUGHTER
And when you saw the tapes yourself,
you began to think
that something was amiss.
If pushed, sure.
Is that your final answer?
LAUGHTER
Mr, Tarrant, what information
or guidance do you get
when you're in the chair?
Do you wear an earpiece,
are you hooked up to the show relay?
Er, no, no. No earpiece,
I find them really annoying.
Er, so I'm out there
completely alone. Er, just me
and the contestant.
I don't know the questions
in advance, no-one does.
They're selected by a computer,
which is secured in a sealed room,
where only two senior producers
are allowed access at any one time.
For each contestant, it generates
a random stack of 15 questions,
that could then be locked.
They're not written on cards
that can be lost, or stolen.
And, er, I don't know the answers
till the contestant says
"final answer" and my screen locks.
So I can't give away any hints
or accidental signs.
Right, so, just for the record,
on the night,
did you hear any suspicious coughing
behind Mr Ingram?
No, I didn't.
Did you notice
anything suspicious at all?
No.
Thank you, Mr Tarrant.
"Tarrant was unaware
of strategic coughing in quiz."
Well, that's not very helpful,
is it?
Well, it's Chris,
he'll say what he likes.
Well, what would you know anyway?
You've not even been at the trial.
I don't know why,
your mind is always there.
Well, to be honest,
the whole thing is one long,
pretty bloody stressful pain
in the arse, I just want it done.
What do you think about a
documentary? Once the trial's over?
Oh, Jesus.
Looks like I don't have a choice.
OK, and so, um,
we thought a new school for a bit,
might take the pressure off.
Urgh! What's that?
OK, girls, upstairs, now.
ANXIOUS BREATHS
Buffy! Oh, my God!
She'll be OK.
What happened?
I think somebody accidentally
..caught him at the front
of the house with a pellet gun
or an air rifle. Accidently.
Is that that coughing
Millionaire dude?
THEY COUGH
Oh, yeah, very good.
Very funny. All right, all right.
Oi!
THEY LAUGH
How dare you! How dare you!
Hey, hold on.
Do you make a habit
of spitting at people?
You can back off as well.
Oi!
He just spat in my face!
Leave him.
Seen it before.
They go after military men,
it's good sport.
Even when we're engaged in
the most, heavens,
difficult operations
in a generation.
This chap.
Information minister of Iraq.
Becoming an actual TV star,
making the most outrageous
assertions about there being
no allied tanks
outside Baghdad at all.
Say something loud enough,
long enough,
maybe it becomes de facto true.
Yeah. Weapons of mass destruction
hidden in the desert.
Yes, all right, Charles, come along.
The thinking is
maybe take some time off.
Try to keep your head down,
you know. Yes?
Yes, yeah.
Yes, of course, yeah.
Very, um Very sensible.
HE SOBS
Sorry, sir. Sorry.
No, no, no. It's all right.
You're You're all right.
Never fear. It's our turn now.
Come on. It's time to turn
this thing around.
Thank you.
Professor Alyn Morice,
specialist in Respiratory Medicine.
An expert on coughing, then.
You've examined Mr Whittock?
Yes.
He suffers from three conditions
that cause chronic coughing.
He tested positive for
perennial rhinitis, hay fever,
and cough variant asthma.
So, for the avoidance of doubt
Mr Whittock has a cough.
Yes, and one that would be hard
to hide in a hot and dry studio.
So hang on, Mr Whittock is basically
unable to control his cough?
I mean, that's sort of
extraordinary, isn't it?
That Ingram should choose,
as a candidate
to implement an intricate plan
of coughing discreetly
but precisely at specific
times and places,
a man with an uncontrollable cough?
Yes, I suppose it's not ideal.
Thank you, Professor Morice.
No questions, Your Honour.
Mr Whittock.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
wasn't the first show
you appeared on, was it?
Um. No, I've, I've been on
er, let me see,
Fifteen To One, Sale Of The Century.
And is it fair to say you've
never done astronomically well?
I do OK.
What's the most you've ever won?
Oh, I did win a doggy bed
made of silk on Brain Of Britain.
And on
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
1,000.
Were you part of what might be
loosely termed this quiz community?
I enjoyed having a connection
to people of a shared interest, yes.
Now, you didn't have the easiest
of upbringings, did you?
You were born
in a psychiatric hospital,
where your mother was a patient.
Raised in foster homes.
And yet despite all that,
you became a teacher.
And you have a family
of your own now, too.
Yes. Yes.
Would you risk all that?
Are you the third mastermind
in a conspiracy to steal
a million pounds, Mr Whittock?
I would never do anything like that.
I would never cheat.
It's you.
You tricked me.
No, it's not what you think.
I just wanted to meet, all right?
It's not illegal, what we do.
I know.
Those were your weaknesses,
your vulnerabilities
that you left in your own system.
I'm not trying to trap you.
Please, come, come and have a drink.
I tip my hat to you, you beat us.
I just
I want to know how far you got.
Well, if it's any consolation, we've
started to move on to other shows,
other prizes now.
And I'm I'm thinking of retiring.
You know, putting a time limit
on answering the call backs?
That was Well done,
that really knocked us for six.
Thank you.
Fair play.
We realised you were pulling
your new "closest-to" questions
from the National Statistics
database. So we did, too.
Populations, travel,
economic forecasts,
births, deaths and marriages.
And if I only had seven seconds now
to find the answer for my client,
then, well, I just had to train.
Two months of my life,
I didn't leave the house.
And from now on, if a client
would get a call back at home,
they'd just hold up their mobile
so I could hear.
And we did it, I got there.
Seven seconds, and I could find
the right fact in the right place
and relay it back to them
over the phone.
How How many people
did you get into my chair?
I'd say hundreds.
Hu
Hundreds?
If you really wanna know how well
we penetrated your fortress,
I worked out how much prize money
you've given away
throughout the run of the show.
And how much of that
was won by our organisation.
It's at least 10%.
One pound, in every ten
was you?
Sorry.
Why are you retiring?
Well, in truth,
it's an expensive outfit to run
and it only returns value
if you've got the clients,
and those clients are drying up.
People who devote themselves
to the acquirement of knowledge.
In order to cheat for money.
You might think me a chancer,
Mr Smith,
but I see which way the wind blows.
Google?
For the quizzing fraternity,
we're the artisan weavers
and Google's the power loom.
Yeah. The bottom's falling out
of the truth market, Mr Smith.
So, I'm cashing in my shares
and getting out.
You might want to consider
doing the same.
Oh, maybe I will.
Once these particular clients
of yours are in jail.
Oh, those two?
They weren't clients.
But
There were hundreds of us, Paul,
everywhere,
without you realising it.
But Charles and Diana Ingram
were never one of ours.
They were never ours.
Mrs Ingram.
What is it about quizzes
that so captivated you?
Captivates you still?
I don't know.
I suppose I like the idea,
in a world of uncertainties,
that that something can be known.
Calling the four pagers
over and over.
Your explanation for that?
Adrian. My brother.
It was just our way of
keeping in touch after he left.
And I never knew
which one had battery,
so I'd always call all four.
I wanted let him know that
Charles had got on to the show.
And presumably that's why he turned
up at the studio later that night?
He was as big a fan as you. Bigger?
The calls you tried to make outside,
on that first night?
Were to our father.
He's a bigger quiz fan
than any of us.
And he regretted so badly
that he was too weak to come.
Now, the quizzing community have
their own theory about the show,
haven't they?
Oh, yes, well we think, thought,
the producers were trying to keep
people like us off the show.
Not entertaining enough.
So we called it being "chair-wise".
Er, performing for the camera
so you might get easier questions
and they'd keep you there longer.
I object to that, Your Honour.
As Chris Tarrant himself explained,
the questions are locked from
the very beginning by computer.
The point is, Your Honour,
it doesn't matter
if the theory is nonsense or not.
My client thought it was true.
Now, the prosecution has made a lot
of your "suspicious behaviour".
Were you looking at the monitors
to check if you were being watched?
No.
They deliberately seat you so you're
facing the back of your partner.
And so the monitor
is the only way to see them.
You wanted to look at the face
of the man you love.
You helped him prepare, didn't you?
Right, you need to trust me, OK?
Yes, ma'am, dib-dib, dob-dob.
You need to learn to be
more entertaining.
Questions are becoming
more populist. Popular culture.
Adrian says
it's a form of censorship,
to get people like you off quicker.
Which means we'll need to bone up
on that, too, your weakest area.
Sports, soaps, pop.
Oh, hells bells.
Oh, it's just training manoeuvres.
Getting fit.
I believe in you.
It's Steps. No, Sugababes.
No, no, no it's Steps. Steps.
Sugababes.
Sugababes.
I'll be there ♪
OK, so who's that?
Mr Blobby.
No, Charles.
I don't know. I don't know.
How am I supposed to know that?
In Emmerdale, how did
the following characters die?
Alex Oakwell.
Fell off a roof.
Butch Dingle.
Hit by a bus.
Rachel Hughes.
She, er, was pushed off a cliff.
Elizabeth Pollard.
A plane landed on top of her.
Yes!
Yes!
I know who you are,
the next time I see you
Oh, it's gone.
'..I'm gonna tan your backside.'
Don't tell me. Don't tell me.
Um
'You hear me?'
In the song Seven Days,
what did Craig David do on Tuesday?
He took her for a drink.
And on Wednesday?
I believe
they were making love by then,
and they continued to do so
throughout Thursday and Friday
as well.
And then on Sunday?
They just chilled.
Right!
CORONATION STREET THEME TUNE PLAYS
'There may be trouble ahead,
'but while there's moonlight
and music and love and romance'
Let's face the music and dance! ♪
Who wants to be a millionaire?
I don't!
Have flashy flunkies everywhere?
I don't!
Who wants the bother
Of a country estate?
A country estate
Is something I'd hate
Who wants to wallow in champagne?
I don't!
Who wants a supersonic plane?
I don't!
Who wants
A marble swimming pool too?
I don't!
ALL: And I don't
Cos all I want is you. ♪
SONIA: If that's true, all this
training, why didn't it work?
You forgot who Craig David was!
I guess it just wouldn't go in.
Everyone always said,
"Why did you
"Why did you struggle
on the easy questions
"and sail through the hard ones?"
And, um
Well, the easy ones were hard to me,
and, um, the hard ones
they just got easier.
But on Craig David.
Why?
Why did you change your answer
from A1?
Well, you can hear it. Listen.
You can hear the gasp.
I think I'm gonna go with A1.
AUDIENCE GASP
One of Diana's best tips.
Always listen to the audience.
If you're found guilty, you'll be
decommissioned from the army
face certain bankruptcy,
possible prison sentence.
People have attacked your house,
slashed your tyres, shot your dog.
And "cough, cough, cough",
everywhere you go.
Why did you put yourself
through all that? For a game.
I didn't.
Because I didn't cheat.
So what did you do?
I just tried to be
entertaining.
And to get the questions right.
And to do my wife proud.
Take the book in your left hand and
read aloud from the card, please.
I swear by almighty God
Mr Smith.
Thank you for joining us today.
Is it fair to say you took a while
to be convinced yourself,
about this coughing theory?
Yes. I wanted to give the Major
the benefit of the doubt.
Um, but as soon as you
begin watching, and listening
Once you are told there are coughs,
it's hard to unhear them.
So these are 19 coughs
that you isolated,
that occurred
on the correct answers.
Do you know how many there
were in total that night?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS COUGH
There were 192 coughs
picked up on that recording
from all over the place.
Only they didn't fit the narrative,
so they were left out.
You left them out
of the famous Tape G.
Just edited, and re-edited,
like a memory,
it's constantly changing.
We have to present to you
what happened somehow,
on in in some form.
Yes, but this is your version
of what happened.
The jury are looking
where you want them to look.
The moment, for instance,
when Mrs Ingram's coughing.
Now, that's not an accident that
that's picked up on the master tape.
That is a choice.
It is a creative choice
made by those who are editing it.
The volume of the 19 is raised,
as you've acknowledged,
but if wanted the jury to hear them
at their original volume,
well, I couldn't, could I?
Because your version
is now the only version of events.
They had to be isolated
in the way that the Major
would have heard them,
if he was listening out for them
to replicate the experience.
Why don't you suspect Judith Keppel,
the first millionaire, of cheating?
Why would I?
Good question.
I will now play
the Judith Keppel tape.
If you wouldn't mind
turning to the television.
For £2,000 between Keppel
choosing the right answers,
and committing to the final answer:
On his legs.
TARRANT: 'Why would he put
his chaps on his legs?'
COUGHING
To stop his legs getting rubbed.
A cough. Similarly,
on the £4,000 question:
I think it's Aquarius.
COUGHING
What are you?
What's your star sign?
A cough. Again,
a cough on the £8,0000 question.
And the £64,000 question.
And on the 500,000.
And on the million.
Now, I don't think she cheated.
You don't.
Why do you think the Major cheated?
I know this game
..and I know how normal people
play it.
And the Major did not play it
normally, I could tell immediately.
Oh, really? What time did you arrive
at the studio that night?
It was, um
Well, OK, it was at the very end.
I didn't actually see him play live.
Oh, so you arrived
late at the studio,
you were told
that something was wrong.
And you have pursued this doggedly
ever since.
That's unfair.
Suspicions were raised.
I called the police
and handed it over to them.
They investigated,
and they decided to charge them.
And the jury will find them innocent
or guilty, that's up to them.
It's not personal.
Well, of course
Of course it's personal.
This was my show.
It was my life.
And believe it or not,
it mattered to me.
The people who enjoyed it.
And the people trying to ruin it.
I see.
Could you explain, then, the one
gaping hole in this whole theory.
Could you explain the 18 minutes
between the Craig David question
and the Baron Haussmann question,
when there are no
significant coughs?
Well, because Mr Whittock
didn't need to cough
on those other questions.
Why not?
Well, because the Major
knew the answer to those questions.
Oh, I see.
Oh, well, then,
my final, final question,
and this is just
a tiny little thing.
How did Tecwen Whittock
know that Charles Ingram,
a man he'd never met,
never communicated with
So how did he know
that Charles knew those answers,
and that he didn't need to cough?
I don't know.
But I know that he cheated.
I'm sorry for everything they've
gone through, nobody wanted that.
But whether it's coughing,
or blinking, or pagers, I know it.
I know it.
He came on my show, and he cheated.
Have you ever heard of this little
thing called "confirmation bias"?
When an assumption
sinks into the brain,
it rearranges and reorganises
all facts to support the assumption.
Like on the show relay.
People, suspicious of a man from
a strange family, talking together.
Something's weird.
On a loop.
He's a real dodgy one.
Yeah, I think this guy's cheating
as well.
Now might that not have created
a shared fiction,
which then everyone in the studio
subconsciously began to
distort reality to match?
Isn't it strange that the only
person not hooked up onto the loop,
Chris Tarrant,
is the only person
not to have suspected a thing?
We're all guilty of it.
We do it every day of our lives.
We adjust the world,
and all the information,
in order to
navigate our way through.
Take Mr Whittock's alleged cough.
"No," for example,
which, incidentally,
could have come from
any one of those contestants,
any one of those microphones.
It's just someone on hearing the
Major hovering over a wrong answer,
muttering quite naturally
to themselves, "No".
Raised to such a volume
on the master tape,
it made you all guffaw
at how obvious it was,
yet on the night, the two people
who sat either side of Mr Whittock,
they didn't hear him say it.
The man who sat opposite the Major,
Chris Tarrant,
he didn't hear him say it.
The 250 people
in the studio audience,
none of them - none of them -
when asked, heard him say it.
Yet miraculously the Major did?
A man who couldn't possibly know the
answer to those questions, right?
Not a man
with a degree in engineering
who knows what mega and a nano is.
A man who was accepted into Mensa
among the cleverest people
in the country,
only he's too modest
to mention it to anyone
so pinned a badge on his lapel,
and hoped some of you might notice.
We are told he's a man
who got carried away by a game.
Not a level-headed UN Peacekeeper
who rescued men
from the battlefields of Bosnia.
No, you're being asked to believe
that he and his wife cooked up
a conspiracy on a phone call
which lasted eight minutes
with a stranger they'd never met
to cough their way to a million
with an accomplice
with a diagnosed cough.
The fact is,
it will be entirely impossible
to categorically prove
that Charles Ingram did not know
the answers to those questions.
Because we cannot get inside here.
His head.
We just can't know.
And therefore you cannot find him
guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
DOOR OPENS
On the charge of
procuring the execution
of a valuable security by deception,
do you find the defendant,
Tecwen Whittock,
guilty or not guilty?
Guilty.
MURMURING
On the same charge, do you find
the defendant, Diana Ingram,
guilty or not guilty?
Guilty.
MURMURING
On the same charge, do you find
the defendant, Charles Ingram,
guilty or not guilty?
Guilty.
This has been a most unusual
and exceptional case.
Frankly, one is hard-pressed
to find anything
about the circumstances of this case
that is not exceptional.
A crime of this nature
normally carries with it
a sentence of a significant
number of years in prison.
I sentence you to 18 months
in prison, suspended for two years.
So that's it? We're free to go?
If we're guilty,
why aren't we going to jail?
Well, maybe these days, justice
just has to be "seen" to be done.
More than it actually has to be.
Don't question it.
Go and live your lives.
I'll have to resign my commission.
It's all right. It doesn't matter.
It does matter. It matters to me.
It's who I am.
What did Chris Tarrant say
at the end of the show?
"What a man. Quite an amazing man".
Are you ready?
PRESS CLAMOUR
I have got nothing to say, guys.
Really.
There's nothing more to say.
And my newspaper
is prepared to pay £675,000
for you to confess to us
exclusively.
I think, er, just the photo.
Thanks.
Big smile.
'A Martin Bashir documentary
on the "Coughing Major"
'received a record breaking
audience for ITV.'
The highest-rated factual programme,
since the funeral of Princess Diana.
CHEERING
'..Tony Blair is blaming the IRA.'
Come on. Time for bed.
HE SIGHS
Yep, up in a sec.
So, come on, then.
What's the answer?
After all that.
Tell us. It's killing me.
Hello.
Oh!
Hello.
Hi, I'm here to take the test.
You want to take the Mensa test?
Yes.
You?
Me, yes. Anyone can, can't they?
£40, please.
To be accepted into Mensa,
you have to qualify in the top
two percentile of IQ in the country.
Starts in five minutes.
Fill in this form
and head through there.
HE CLEARS HIS THROA
After the Major's performance
that second night,
you told police
you heard the Ingrams arguing.
Yes. I remember it very clearly.
After all, it was so, like, odd.
I mean, you'd be happy,
wouldn't you,
if you'd just become millionaires?
No, I'm sorry, but it's just
so obvious, the signals!
We'll talk later!
Well, that's what I heard.
I reckon, I know you haven't asked,
but I reckon the plan was for him
to stop a few questions earlier.
So there wouldn't be so much, um,
attention.
But he couldn't help himself.
And she might have been
annoyed at him.
Because well, look where we are.
The memory's a funny thing,
isn't it?
An incredible feat of engineering.
It sits inside
the medial temporal lobe.
And its most impressive function
is its filing system.
It's better than anything
a super computer could do.
Another of my favourite facts,
given that that's what this trial
is all about,
right answers, wrong answers.
Knowledge.
Truth is that
when we're remembering something
..we're not actually
recalling the original event.
What we're doing is remembering
the last time we remembered it.
So we are constantly
wiping our pasts
and editing together a new one.
One that can make sense to us now,
in the present.
All memories are therefore,
by definition
..a lie. They change.
We change them.
Which isn't a crime, a conspiracy.
Just
..human nature.
We can project guilt, say,
back onto an event that was in fact
perfectly innocent.
I'm sorry, but it's really bad.
The signal's, um
We'll talk later!
I am asking you all
to try and resist
a more entertaining falsehood
in favour of
a less extraordinary truth.
That Major Ingram simply knew
the answers to those questions.
And that's why he got them right.
OK, let's go.
Diana?
We should tell you, we have taken in
two other parties for questioning.
Your brother, Mrs Ingram,
and another contestant
in the studio.
Another conte? Why? Who?
Here's a transcript of your
appearance, provided by Celador.
It shows, quite clearly,
moments where a cough can be heard,
and then you, Charles,
choosing a different answer.
Why did you
change your mind so often?
HE GUFFAWS
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm ju
I'm just sort of hovering above
all this looking down,
seeing how absurd it all is.
It's a game show.
This isn't a laughing matter,
Major Ingram, it's a million pounds.
Your change of answer?
Have you ever seen the show?
That's what makes the show, that's
what the audience want to watch,
that's what the producers want.
It's the the, um
the the the
Tension.
..drama. The tension. Exactly.
Mrs Ingram.
The book you're writing with Adrian
details ways of,
at the very least, bending the rules
or in some cases circumventing
Improving your chances, that's all.
I have to say,
and please don't take offence,
it wasn't the most gripping
read of my life.
Well, it's not for people who
Do you know,
I do take some offence, actually.
Presumably you've benefitted
from this manual, Charles?
I haven't, I haven't read
I haven't actually
got through it yet.
Do you know who Tecwen Whittock is?
No.
You have no idea
your wife telephoned this man
on several occasions,
including the night before
and the morning of your
second appearance on the show,
at which he was also present?
He's just a man, a fan of the show.
Who just happened to be
a Fastest Finger First contestant
on the same show?
A show where coughing was heard
on occasions that correlate
with moments that you, Charles,
changed your mind?
How long has this
relationship with
It's not a relationship! It was
..contact with someone who under
Who was just a fan of the show.
And I know you might think
that's stupid or boring or silly,
but I don't care.
It's not bloody illegal, is it?
We just
We just liked something
a lot for a bit. That's all.
Oh, my God.
PRESS CLAMOUR
Can you park as close as you can,
please?
Diana.
Were you cheating?
Did you cheat?
Diana? Di
Can you step away
from the house, please?
I'm not I'm not sure where
the law is on this, but I don't
Cheat! Cheat!
Get away from the house, please.
How they even got here,
I mean, who told them?
It's a nightmare.
This is a nightmare, isn't it?
I mean, they They actually think
we did it, don't they?
They're looking at all the pieces
and putting them together like a
You know, like that man that you
you called, right?
On your phone. Oh, my God,
on the night of the show!
I mean, they have that on record.
I don't "know him" know him,
Charles.
What they were suggesting, implying.
I've never spent any
actual time with him. Adrian did.
Oh, Adrian! Of course!
It's Adrian, always!
You follow the smoke
and you follow the sound of screams
and there he is, and there you are,
in your little little
What? What?
..family thing.
And I didn't even want to
go on the bloody show!
I just got sucked into it.
Why didn't you tell me you were
having conversations with him?
I thought you were chatting
with him. I thought it was just
It was just a phone call. They don't
know what we were talking about.
It could have been anything.
All right, let's try this, OK?
I'm the prosecuting lawyer, right?
And I'm asking you,
"Mrs Ingram, this man,
"who your husband had
barely any idea
"of the extent of the contact
you had with him,
"what did you speak about
that night?"
I'd just say that we were
both in groups of fans,
and he was on the show the next day,
so why wouldn't I call him?
Because it's about perception,
Diana.
It's about how it looks.
And how does it look?
What are you saying,
and why are you saying it like that?
Because I'm angry! I'm angry!
And not saying it, it's the
bloody policeman who's saying it.
Saying it right
Saying it right in front of me.
And in front of the other
..in front of the other policeman.
My
That my wife
I mean, have you
Do you have any idea how that feels?
What they were
implying and suggesting?
Are you asking me if I..?
Yeah, why not?
I mean, you love questions.
Well, there are some things
There are some questions
you should just know the answer to.
Major Ingram, Mrs Ingram.
Oh How did you guess?
Oh, I don't need to guess,
your faces are in all the papers.
Come in. Come in.
Now, do you want a tea, coffee?
Vodka?
THEY CHUCKLE
I was kidding.
Unless of course you do,
in which case, I wouldn't judge.
Um, you were recommended to us
by Philip Jones in Reading.
But we we never thought
a high-profile barrister
would touch our case with a barge
pole, because Well, given that
Oh, given that your trial's
already begun in the papers.
Yeah.
And the press.
Yes, well, if I represent you,
we're gonna have to fight this
sort of thing every step of the way.
It's new state of play.
What's the new state of play?
Justice as entertainment.
How the police
communicate with the press.
How the press
communicate with the police.
I don't suppose you think
it was a coincidence
that reporters were there
only minutes after you were charged?
Following your, er,
did I get this right?
The "dawn raid" on your property?
It's a form of arrest
that's normally associated
with murderers and paedophiles.
The narrative of your guilt
is already being written
by forces far beyond your control.
Now, I would be happy
to represent you if you want,
because,
and forgive the presumption,
I have already started looking
into your case in some detail and
..Major Ingram, Mrs Ingram
I think something here
really stinks.
Secrets To Help You Win
At Millionaire, by Diana Ingram.
The things we missed.
We pull on this one tiny thread
and what unravels
is a whole bloody world of
God, we were stupid.
Not stupid, trusting. That's all.
Liddiment says he never wants to see
another "effing middle-class wanker"
on the show ever again.
What are they doing?
Parents verses kids at
physical and mental agility games.
That's the worst idea
I've ever heard.
It's new ideas.
Well, Millionaire
won't last forever.
Well, we're on the front page
of every newspaper in the world.
It might.
An Army Major, his wife,
and a college lecturer
have gone on trial
NEWS REPORTS BEGIN TO OVERLAP
The production staff
became suspicious after they noticed
his answers appeared to follow
coughs from another contestant.
PRESS CLAMOUR
Oh, hello. I believe
we're charged with co-conspiracy.
It's nice to meet you both
at last.
Snacks? Really?
Yeah, why not?
God, I love
a good ITV courtroom drama.
Where's Paul?
So, 19 coughs that coincide
with the Major changing his mind
or deciding to answer.
All picked up by your mics,
and coming from where?
Er, they were coming from
the Fastest Finger seats.
Where Mr Whittock was sat.
The man whom Diana Ingram spoke to
the previous evening.
Paying particular attention now
to cough number 14, then.
"Who had a hit UK album with
Born To Do It, released in 2000?
"Coldplay. Toploader.
A1. Craig David".
In case you don't know, I certainly
didn't, the answer's Craig David.
Ingram:
"I think it's A1"
But it could be Toploader.
Which is also something to do with
a barrel on a rifle.
LAUGHTER
"I've never heard of Craig David."
And take us through
what we can see here.
Yeah, she appears to be looking over
to the Fastest Finger First seat
where Mr Whittock is.
Diana Ingram, here. Looking over
at Tecwen Whittock, here.
Any coughing at this point?
No, that's, that's part of
the problem, see, Mr Whittock,
or whoever has been coughing,
isn't coughing at this point.
Perhaps, given pop culture tends not
to be a strongest of category for,
um, these kinds of people, er,
maybe he doesn't know the answer.
Meanwhile, Ingram is all set
to plump for the wrong answer.
I think I'm gonna go with A1.
And pause.
Mrs Ingram
looks up in that direction
several times at this point.
What's up there?
So we have these monitors
facing the audience,
so they can watch
what the cameras are recording.
Which means presumably
those monitors occasionally display
Mrs Ingram being filmed? She can
see when she herself is on camera?
Yes. Although that's only when the
mixer cuts to her for the monitors.
She's always being filmed. Hence
why we have this footage of her.
Ah, so,
would someone not au fait with the
inner workings of television editing
perhaps assume that when they are
not on the monitors above them,
they are not being filmed?
After all,
here we have Diana Ingram,
her husband hovering
over the wrong answer,
looking at Tecwen Whittock,
who isn't coughing
on the correct answer,
checking the monitors
to see if she is being filmed,
before this happens.
SHE COUGHS
LAUGHTER IN THE COURTROOM
Now, is this the first and only
time that Diana Ingram coughed?
Yes.
At a moment when the phantom cougher
is no longer "helping".
Regardless, moments later,
the Major reverses his position.
You know, when I'm at home,
um, and I'm practising,
you know, I guess
I guess wrong 80% of the time.
ON-SCREEN LAUGHTER
So
I think I'm gonna go with
Craig David.
LAUGHTER IN COURTROOM
And if that wasn't exactly subtle -
watch this. The piece de resistance!
For £500,000
"Baron Haussmann is best known
for his planning of which city?
I think it's Berlin.
ON-SCREEN COUGH THAT RESEMBLES "NO"
LAUGHTER IN COURTROOM
Your interpretation of that,
Mr Duff?
There is no interpretation.
Someone says "no"
on the wrong answer.
Thank you. Mrs Woodley will now ask
you some questions for the defence.
Hello, Kevin.
Hi.
That tape we were watching.
It was given the name Tape G?
So presumably there were
other tapes, earlier tapes.
A, B, C, D, E, F?
Er, yeah, sure, as we kept finding
new evidence with the police.
So help us understand
what we were watching.
That was edited together
by yourself?
The plaintiffs. Celador.
Not the police,
not an independent body?
Well, we've had to find a way
to show the police,
and then you, what, you know
what happened.
Thank you, Mr Duff.
Mr Whitehurst.
You were a Fastest Finger First
contestant on the Major's show.
And yet you were the only one who
didn't stand to applaud when he won.
Why?
I'd spotted what was going on.
I knew all of the answers, you see.
And on the millionaire question,
and as soon as Ingram said "googol",
I knew it was "googol",
I had Whittock in my eye and I said,
"Don't you dare," and he did.
He coughed.
HE COUGHS
Plain as day. No question.
Mr Whitehurst.
You didn't formally
raise your suspicions
until after you'd read the story
in the press.
And then when you wrote
to the producers,
but received no reply,
you went to the press yourself.
I thought it important.
If I was the only one who'd spotted
Mr Whittock coughing.
You said it was as plain as day,
no question.
But in your original statement
you said,
"It is possible that what I saw
"was just an amazing set
of coincidences,"
and that, "The possibility remains
"that I witnessed
no criminal behaviour"
What changed since then to make you
so absolutely certain here today?
Watch the tape!
I'm sat not clapping.
Why, if I didn't know?
Because Fastest Finger First
contestants share a grievance,
don't they, quite often,
in the bar after the show?
About the behaviour of a certain
kind of contestant in the chair?
What do you mean, sorry?
Talkers.
People who take forever
to answer a question.
Thereby denying you the chance
of getting into the seat yourself?
Might that not have created
a certain kind of
arms-folded annoyance?
I object to that, Your Honour.
Okeydokey. Withdrawn.
No further questions.
In the days leading up to the show,
Mrs Ingram engaged in a peculiar
pattern of phone calls
to four particular numbers,
in rotation.
It turns out
these were phone pagers.
We consider this to be the way
they may have tried to cheat
on that first night.
The pagers could have been strapped
to parts of the Major's body.
Buzz the left leg for A,
the right leg for B, and so on.
But Mrs Ingram couldn't
be calling pagers on the night,
she was on camera in the audience.
No. But there was someone else
in the studio that night.
So that
HE COUGHS
Excuse me.
So what you are saying
is that plan failed
because Mr Pollock
was unable to call on his phone.
Explaining, perhaps, why the Major
didn't do well on night one.
And yet, on night two,
he came back a genius.
The night Mr Whittock was there
with his tickly cough.
What's the normal procedure
when investigating a more,
I suppose, self-evident crime?
Say, where there is a body at the
scene, and a murder weapon present.
Well, you establish
the cause of death,
bag up the weapon as evidence
to test for fingerprints.
So at what point here did you
"bag up" the evidence.
In this case, a tape recording.
Did you seize it straight away?
Well, no. The, er, the show
kept the tape, because
well, to use your metaphor,
they needed to add
the fingerprints to it.
Not add them, I mean find them.
The coughs.
So you allowed the murder weapon
to stay with those
making the accusation of murder?
I object.
What is being suggested here?
Some kind of conspiracy?
Not conspiracy,
merely that the sequence
in which the evidence was gathered
in this unusual case was not normal.
Normally when a crime is committed,
the evidence
is gathered from the scene,
and the police investigate
to find the culprits.
But in this instance,
you began with the alleged culprits,
who everyone told you
were oddballs
MULTIPLE COUGHS AROUND COURTROOM
..based on a feeling.
And then worked backwards
COUGHS CONTINUE
JUDGE: I must call for quiet.
Everyone who has a cough,
please go outside.
DS Ferguson? Is that?
COUGHING CONTINUES
Members of the jury, please!
If I may be allowed to finish
JUDGE BANGS GAVEL
Order! Order!
Or I shall
HE COUGHS
..I shall have to
suspend the session.
I'm sorry. It's just
the pantomime of it all.
I'm embarrassed sometimes,
really am.
No. Ignore it. We do.
It's not going that well, is it?
It's all right.
A game of two halves.
Wait till we get a chance
to fight back.
People are laughing at us.
I really don't know what's worse,
people thinking we're criminals
or idiots.
There are worse things
to be accused of.
Let me ask you this, then.
Why haven't you even mentioned that?
Hm? Your sodding badge,
you think I hadn't noticed?
You've got the press screaming
questions at you day in, day out,
which our opponents are happily
answering to guide the narra
I don't want to boast about it,
do I?
I don't It's there,
for all to see. I do it for my
for myself,
as much as anything else.
PASSER-BY COUGHING
Yes, all right, hilarious, coughing!
You get the Nobel Prize for
comedy.
I don't actually think there is a
Nobel Prize for comedy,
yes, thank you.
Right.
Come on.
Mummy and Daddy
finished early today,
so we decided we'd pick you up
instead of Grandad.
That's nice, isn't it?
SHE SIGHS
We thought
maybe we'd have pizzas tonight, yum.
SHE YELPS
Who are they?
Are they friends of yours?
Not any more.
It's going to be all right.
I promise.
Some silly people just think
Mummy and Daddy did that
silly thing, that's all.
Well, did you?
We might need to consider taking
them out of school for a bit maybe.
I don't know, it's..
Then again, if the worst happens
..we might need to make plans for,
er
..for prison.
Then we need to think
PHONE RINGS
Adrian.
Oh, leave it. Please. Leave
Hello?
Hey. Hi. You OK?
I just wanted to say hello, really.
I'm fine. Can I call you
'It's just a quick thing, really.'
Er, cos the publisher's
been on at me, you know. Again
And, er, look, if you do get off,
and you never know, then
I'm in court every day, Adrian,
I can't think about the book.
OK, OK, OK, I know.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know.
Let's just talk tomorrow.
No, just stop, just stop.
I just need some space, please.
Enough.
Um, can I
Can I bring you a cup of tea?
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry, Charles.
No. No, no, no. No, don't do that.
Don't do that.
Thanks, but no. It's all right.
It's both of us in this together.
That stupid show!
Are we going to go to jail?
No.
I don't know.
But I know that I love you.
No No asking the audience,
or phoning a friend, I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
PRESS: Mr Tarrant! Mr Tarrant!
THEY CLAMOUR
I swear by almighty God
that the evidence I shall give
shall be the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth.
Mr Tarrant,
a pleasure to have you here today.
Well, it's a pleas
Well, it's not a pleasure,
but thank you.
How would you rate the Major's
performance on that first night?
Has anyone done worse? Has anyone,
say, got the first question wrong?
Uh, no. not here.
Think someone did once in America.
LAUGHTER
And when you saw the tapes yourself,
you began to think
that something was amiss.
If pushed, sure.
Is that your final answer?
LAUGHTER
Mr, Tarrant, what information
or guidance do you get
when you're in the chair?
Do you wear an earpiece,
are you hooked up to the show relay?
Er, no, no. No earpiece,
I find them really annoying.
Er, so I'm out there
completely alone. Er, just me
and the contestant.
I don't know the questions
in advance, no-one does.
They're selected by a computer,
which is secured in a sealed room,
where only two senior producers
are allowed access at any one time.
For each contestant, it generates
a random stack of 15 questions,
that could then be locked.
They're not written on cards
that can be lost, or stolen.
And, er, I don't know the answers
till the contestant says
"final answer" and my screen locks.
So I can't give away any hints
or accidental signs.
Right, so, just for the record,
on the night,
did you hear any suspicious coughing
behind Mr Ingram?
No, I didn't.
Did you notice
anything suspicious at all?
No.
Thank you, Mr Tarrant.
"Tarrant was unaware
of strategic coughing in quiz."
Well, that's not very helpful,
is it?
Well, it's Chris,
he'll say what he likes.
Well, what would you know anyway?
You've not even been at the trial.
I don't know why,
your mind is always there.
Well, to be honest,
the whole thing is one long,
pretty bloody stressful pain
in the arse, I just want it done.
What do you think about a
documentary? Once the trial's over?
Oh, Jesus.
Looks like I don't have a choice.
OK, and so, um,
we thought a new school for a bit,
might take the pressure off.
Urgh! What's that?
OK, girls, upstairs, now.
ANXIOUS BREATHS
Buffy! Oh, my God!
She'll be OK.
What happened?
I think somebody accidentally
..caught him at the front
of the house with a pellet gun
or an air rifle. Accidently.
Is that that coughing
Millionaire dude?
THEY COUGH
Oh, yeah, very good.
Very funny. All right, all right.
Oi!
THEY LAUGH
How dare you! How dare you!
Hey, hold on.
Do you make a habit
of spitting at people?
You can back off as well.
Oi!
He just spat in my face!
Leave him.
Seen it before.
They go after military men,
it's good sport.
Even when we're engaged in
the most, heavens,
difficult operations
in a generation.
This chap.
Information minister of Iraq.
Becoming an actual TV star,
making the most outrageous
assertions about there being
no allied tanks
outside Baghdad at all.
Say something loud enough,
long enough,
maybe it becomes de facto true.
Yeah. Weapons of mass destruction
hidden in the desert.
Yes, all right, Charles, come along.
The thinking is
maybe take some time off.
Try to keep your head down,
you know. Yes?
Yes, yeah.
Yes, of course, yeah.
Very, um Very sensible.
HE SOBS
Sorry, sir. Sorry.
No, no, no. It's all right.
You're You're all right.
Never fear. It's our turn now.
Come on. It's time to turn
this thing around.
Thank you.
Professor Alyn Morice,
specialist in Respiratory Medicine.
An expert on coughing, then.
You've examined Mr Whittock?
Yes.
He suffers from three conditions
that cause chronic coughing.
He tested positive for
perennial rhinitis, hay fever,
and cough variant asthma.
So, for the avoidance of doubt
Mr Whittock has a cough.
Yes, and one that would be hard
to hide in a hot and dry studio.
So hang on, Mr Whittock is basically
unable to control his cough?
I mean, that's sort of
extraordinary, isn't it?
That Ingram should choose,
as a candidate
to implement an intricate plan
of coughing discreetly
but precisely at specific
times and places,
a man with an uncontrollable cough?
Yes, I suppose it's not ideal.
Thank you, Professor Morice.
No questions, Your Honour.
Mr Whittock.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
wasn't the first show
you appeared on, was it?
Um. No, I've, I've been on
er, let me see,
Fifteen To One, Sale Of The Century.
And is it fair to say you've
never done astronomically well?
I do OK.
What's the most you've ever won?
Oh, I did win a doggy bed
made of silk on Brain Of Britain.
And on
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
1,000.
Were you part of what might be
loosely termed this quiz community?
I enjoyed having a connection
to people of a shared interest, yes.
Now, you didn't have the easiest
of upbringings, did you?
You were born
in a psychiatric hospital,
where your mother was a patient.
Raised in foster homes.
And yet despite all that,
you became a teacher.
And you have a family
of your own now, too.
Yes. Yes.
Would you risk all that?
Are you the third mastermind
in a conspiracy to steal
a million pounds, Mr Whittock?
I would never do anything like that.
I would never cheat.
It's you.
You tricked me.
No, it's not what you think.
I just wanted to meet, all right?
It's not illegal, what we do.
I know.
Those were your weaknesses,
your vulnerabilities
that you left in your own system.
I'm not trying to trap you.
Please, come, come and have a drink.
I tip my hat to you, you beat us.
I just
I want to know how far you got.
Well, if it's any consolation, we've
started to move on to other shows,
other prizes now.
And I'm I'm thinking of retiring.
You know, putting a time limit
on answering the call backs?
That was Well done,
that really knocked us for six.
Thank you.
Fair play.
We realised you were pulling
your new "closest-to" questions
from the National Statistics
database. So we did, too.
Populations, travel,
economic forecasts,
births, deaths and marriages.
And if I only had seven seconds now
to find the answer for my client,
then, well, I just had to train.
Two months of my life,
I didn't leave the house.
And from now on, if a client
would get a call back at home,
they'd just hold up their mobile
so I could hear.
And we did it, I got there.
Seven seconds, and I could find
the right fact in the right place
and relay it back to them
over the phone.
How How many people
did you get into my chair?
I'd say hundreds.
Hu
Hundreds?
If you really wanna know how well
we penetrated your fortress,
I worked out how much prize money
you've given away
throughout the run of the show.
And how much of that
was won by our organisation.
It's at least 10%.
One pound, in every ten
was you?
Sorry.
Why are you retiring?
Well, in truth,
it's an expensive outfit to run
and it only returns value
if you've got the clients,
and those clients are drying up.
People who devote themselves
to the acquirement of knowledge.
In order to cheat for money.
You might think me a chancer,
Mr Smith,
but I see which way the wind blows.
Google?
For the quizzing fraternity,
we're the artisan weavers
and Google's the power loom.
Yeah. The bottom's falling out
of the truth market, Mr Smith.
So, I'm cashing in my shares
and getting out.
You might want to consider
doing the same.
Oh, maybe I will.
Once these particular clients
of yours are in jail.
Oh, those two?
They weren't clients.
But
There were hundreds of us, Paul,
everywhere,
without you realising it.
But Charles and Diana Ingram
were never one of ours.
They were never ours.
Mrs Ingram.
What is it about quizzes
that so captivated you?
Captivates you still?
I don't know.
I suppose I like the idea,
in a world of uncertainties,
that that something can be known.
Calling the four pagers
over and over.
Your explanation for that?
Adrian. My brother.
It was just our way of
keeping in touch after he left.
And I never knew
which one had battery,
so I'd always call all four.
I wanted let him know that
Charles had got on to the show.
And presumably that's why he turned
up at the studio later that night?
He was as big a fan as you. Bigger?
The calls you tried to make outside,
on that first night?
Were to our father.
He's a bigger quiz fan
than any of us.
And he regretted so badly
that he was too weak to come.
Now, the quizzing community have
their own theory about the show,
haven't they?
Oh, yes, well we think, thought,
the producers were trying to keep
people like us off the show.
Not entertaining enough.
So we called it being "chair-wise".
Er, performing for the camera
so you might get easier questions
and they'd keep you there longer.
I object to that, Your Honour.
As Chris Tarrant himself explained,
the questions are locked from
the very beginning by computer.
The point is, Your Honour,
it doesn't matter
if the theory is nonsense or not.
My client thought it was true.
Now, the prosecution has made a lot
of your "suspicious behaviour".
Were you looking at the monitors
to check if you were being watched?
No.
They deliberately seat you so you're
facing the back of your partner.
And so the monitor
is the only way to see them.
You wanted to look at the face
of the man you love.
You helped him prepare, didn't you?
Right, you need to trust me, OK?
Yes, ma'am, dib-dib, dob-dob.
You need to learn to be
more entertaining.
Questions are becoming
more populist. Popular culture.
Adrian says
it's a form of censorship,
to get people like you off quicker.
Which means we'll need to bone up
on that, too, your weakest area.
Sports, soaps, pop.
Oh, hells bells.
Oh, it's just training manoeuvres.
Getting fit.
I believe in you.
It's Steps. No, Sugababes.
No, no, no it's Steps. Steps.
Sugababes.
Sugababes.
I'll be there ♪
OK, so who's that?
Mr Blobby.
No, Charles.
I don't know. I don't know.
How am I supposed to know that?
In Emmerdale, how did
the following characters die?
Alex Oakwell.
Fell off a roof.
Butch Dingle.
Hit by a bus.
Rachel Hughes.
She, er, was pushed off a cliff.
Elizabeth Pollard.
A plane landed on top of her.
Yes!
Yes!
I know who you are,
the next time I see you
Oh, it's gone.
'..I'm gonna tan your backside.'
Don't tell me. Don't tell me.
Um
'You hear me?'
In the song Seven Days,
what did Craig David do on Tuesday?
He took her for a drink.
And on Wednesday?
I believe
they were making love by then,
and they continued to do so
throughout Thursday and Friday
as well.
And then on Sunday?
They just chilled.
Right!
CORONATION STREET THEME TUNE PLAYS
'There may be trouble ahead,
'but while there's moonlight
and music and love and romance'
Let's face the music and dance! ♪
Who wants to be a millionaire?
I don't!
Have flashy flunkies everywhere?
I don't!
Who wants the bother
Of a country estate?
A country estate
Is something I'd hate
Who wants to wallow in champagne?
I don't!
Who wants a supersonic plane?
I don't!
Who wants
A marble swimming pool too?
I don't!
ALL: And I don't
Cos all I want is you. ♪
SONIA: If that's true, all this
training, why didn't it work?
You forgot who Craig David was!
I guess it just wouldn't go in.
Everyone always said,
"Why did you
"Why did you struggle
on the easy questions
"and sail through the hard ones?"
And, um
Well, the easy ones were hard to me,
and, um, the hard ones
they just got easier.
But on Craig David.
Why?
Why did you change your answer
from A1?
Well, you can hear it. Listen.
You can hear the gasp.
I think I'm gonna go with A1.
AUDIENCE GASP
One of Diana's best tips.
Always listen to the audience.
If you're found guilty, you'll be
decommissioned from the army
face certain bankruptcy,
possible prison sentence.
People have attacked your house,
slashed your tyres, shot your dog.
And "cough, cough, cough",
everywhere you go.
Why did you put yourself
through all that? For a game.
I didn't.
Because I didn't cheat.
So what did you do?
I just tried to be
entertaining.
And to get the questions right.
And to do my wife proud.
Take the book in your left hand and
read aloud from the card, please.
I swear by almighty God
Mr Smith.
Thank you for joining us today.
Is it fair to say you took a while
to be convinced yourself,
about this coughing theory?
Yes. I wanted to give the Major
the benefit of the doubt.
Um, but as soon as you
begin watching, and listening
Once you are told there are coughs,
it's hard to unhear them.
So these are 19 coughs
that you isolated,
that occurred
on the correct answers.
Do you know how many there
were in total that night?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS COUGH
There were 192 coughs
picked up on that recording
from all over the place.
Only they didn't fit the narrative,
so they were left out.
You left them out
of the famous Tape G.
Just edited, and re-edited,
like a memory,
it's constantly changing.
We have to present to you
what happened somehow,
on in in some form.
Yes, but this is your version
of what happened.
The jury are looking
where you want them to look.
The moment, for instance,
when Mrs Ingram's coughing.
Now, that's not an accident that
that's picked up on the master tape.
That is a choice.
It is a creative choice
made by those who are editing it.
The volume of the 19 is raised,
as you've acknowledged,
but if wanted the jury to hear them
at their original volume,
well, I couldn't, could I?
Because your version
is now the only version of events.
They had to be isolated
in the way that the Major
would have heard them,
if he was listening out for them
to replicate the experience.
Why don't you suspect Judith Keppel,
the first millionaire, of cheating?
Why would I?
Good question.
I will now play
the Judith Keppel tape.
If you wouldn't mind
turning to the television.
For £2,000 between Keppel
choosing the right answers,
and committing to the final answer:
On his legs.
TARRANT: 'Why would he put
his chaps on his legs?'
COUGHING
To stop his legs getting rubbed.
A cough. Similarly,
on the £4,000 question:
I think it's Aquarius.
COUGHING
What are you?
What's your star sign?
A cough. Again,
a cough on the £8,0000 question.
And the £64,000 question.
And on the 500,000.
And on the million.
Now, I don't think she cheated.
You don't.
Why do you think the Major cheated?
I know this game
..and I know how normal people
play it.
And the Major did not play it
normally, I could tell immediately.
Oh, really? What time did you arrive
at the studio that night?
It was, um
Well, OK, it was at the very end.
I didn't actually see him play live.
Oh, so you arrived
late at the studio,
you were told
that something was wrong.
And you have pursued this doggedly
ever since.
That's unfair.
Suspicions were raised.
I called the police
and handed it over to them.
They investigated,
and they decided to charge them.
And the jury will find them innocent
or guilty, that's up to them.
It's not personal.
Well, of course
Of course it's personal.
This was my show.
It was my life.
And believe it or not,
it mattered to me.
The people who enjoyed it.
And the people trying to ruin it.
I see.
Could you explain, then, the one
gaping hole in this whole theory.
Could you explain the 18 minutes
between the Craig David question
and the Baron Haussmann question,
when there are no
significant coughs?
Well, because Mr Whittock
didn't need to cough
on those other questions.
Why not?
Well, because the Major
knew the answer to those questions.
Oh, I see.
Oh, well, then,
my final, final question,
and this is just
a tiny little thing.
How did Tecwen Whittock
know that Charles Ingram,
a man he'd never met,
never communicated with
So how did he know
that Charles knew those answers,
and that he didn't need to cough?
I don't know.
But I know that he cheated.
I'm sorry for everything they've
gone through, nobody wanted that.
But whether it's coughing,
or blinking, or pagers, I know it.
I know it.
He came on my show, and he cheated.
Have you ever heard of this little
thing called "confirmation bias"?
When an assumption
sinks into the brain,
it rearranges and reorganises
all facts to support the assumption.
Like on the show relay.
People, suspicious of a man from
a strange family, talking together.
Something's weird.
On a loop.
He's a real dodgy one.
Yeah, I think this guy's cheating
as well.
Now might that not have created
a shared fiction,
which then everyone in the studio
subconsciously began to
distort reality to match?
Isn't it strange that the only
person not hooked up onto the loop,
Chris Tarrant,
is the only person
not to have suspected a thing?
We're all guilty of it.
We do it every day of our lives.
We adjust the world,
and all the information,
in order to
navigate our way through.
Take Mr Whittock's alleged cough.
"No," for example,
which, incidentally,
could have come from
any one of those contestants,
any one of those microphones.
It's just someone on hearing the
Major hovering over a wrong answer,
muttering quite naturally
to themselves, "No".
Raised to such a volume
on the master tape,
it made you all guffaw
at how obvious it was,
yet on the night, the two people
who sat either side of Mr Whittock,
they didn't hear him say it.
The man who sat opposite the Major,
Chris Tarrant,
he didn't hear him say it.
The 250 people
in the studio audience,
none of them - none of them -
when asked, heard him say it.
Yet miraculously the Major did?
A man who couldn't possibly know the
answer to those questions, right?
Not a man
with a degree in engineering
who knows what mega and a nano is.
A man who was accepted into Mensa
among the cleverest people
in the country,
only he's too modest
to mention it to anyone
so pinned a badge on his lapel,
and hoped some of you might notice.
We are told he's a man
who got carried away by a game.
Not a level-headed UN Peacekeeper
who rescued men
from the battlefields of Bosnia.
No, you're being asked to believe
that he and his wife cooked up
a conspiracy on a phone call
which lasted eight minutes
with a stranger they'd never met
to cough their way to a million
with an accomplice
with a diagnosed cough.
The fact is,
it will be entirely impossible
to categorically prove
that Charles Ingram did not know
the answers to those questions.
Because we cannot get inside here.
His head.
We just can't know.
And therefore you cannot find him
guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
DOOR OPENS
On the charge of
procuring the execution
of a valuable security by deception,
do you find the defendant,
Tecwen Whittock,
guilty or not guilty?
Guilty.
MURMURING
On the same charge, do you find
the defendant, Diana Ingram,
guilty or not guilty?
Guilty.
MURMURING
On the same charge, do you find
the defendant, Charles Ingram,
guilty or not guilty?
Guilty.
This has been a most unusual
and exceptional case.
Frankly, one is hard-pressed
to find anything
about the circumstances of this case
that is not exceptional.
A crime of this nature
normally carries with it
a sentence of a significant
number of years in prison.
I sentence you to 18 months
in prison, suspended for two years.
So that's it? We're free to go?
If we're guilty,
why aren't we going to jail?
Well, maybe these days, justice
just has to be "seen" to be done.
More than it actually has to be.
Don't question it.
Go and live your lives.
I'll have to resign my commission.
It's all right. It doesn't matter.
It does matter. It matters to me.
It's who I am.
What did Chris Tarrant say
at the end of the show?
"What a man. Quite an amazing man".
Are you ready?
PRESS CLAMOUR
I have got nothing to say, guys.
Really.
There's nothing more to say.
And my newspaper
is prepared to pay £675,000
for you to confess to us
exclusively.
I think, er, just the photo.
Thanks.
Big smile.
'A Martin Bashir documentary
on the "Coughing Major"
'received a record breaking
audience for ITV.'
The highest-rated factual programme,
since the funeral of Princess Diana.
CHEERING
'..Tony Blair is blaming the IRA.'
Come on. Time for bed.
HE SIGHS
Yep, up in a sec.
So, come on, then.
What's the answer?
After all that.
Tell us. It's killing me.