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Bad Show: The Quiz, The Cough, The Millionaire Major
Charles Ingram, a major in the British Army, became the third winner of the million-pound prize on ITV’s top-rated Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? But his victory was short-lived. It was alleged that a fellow contestant had helped him with the questions by coughing to indicate the correct answers. Ingram was stripped of his prize and charged with fraud offences. He and his wife Diana were both convicted. Ingram’s life was in ruins. He had to resign his army commission and lost his reputation, his home and any prospects of future employment. He had been a well-respected army officer, but now he was described in the British press as a man who was as publicly reviled as a mass murderer. He has always asserted that he won the prize fairly. Now, for the first time, Bad Show tells the complete story and examines all the evidence in order to explain exactly what happened on that fateful night.
- GenresNonfiction
384 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 23, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 7, 2018
I came upon this book via an internet post by GM Plaskett which discussed the case of the infamous coughing Major on the British version of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. He suggested, based on his own experience of the show and his watching of the video of the Major's episodes, that Charles Ingram was innocent. It's important to give the Major a name, since he has gone through that experience of being turned into a non-person partly by taking his name from him.
I was immediately hooked. As a bridge player I'd followed stories of cheating in bridge and done some investigation of my own, not only into the contemporary game of bridge, but also its predecessor whist, and earlier card and dice games. The story sounded very similar to ones I'd looked at, a person found guilty, but was the evidence enough? The authors kindly organised to send me a copy of the book and I devoured it.
That was a couple of years ago and I've been sitting on it since, because....I wasn't sure what I really thought. Reading the book, it is clear that there has been a miscarriage of justice from a legal point of view. I don't think there's any doubt about that based on the arguments and evidence presented by investigative journalist Bob Woffinden and Plaskett. And yet, as I read, even though I felt that the case for innocence was compelling, I nonetheless wasn't convinced that this constituted the facts of the matter.
I looked at video on Youtube which shows Ingram in action, and I felt more doubtful. Unfortunately there isn't undoctored video available as I understand it, and I'm watching it as somebody who knows what they are supposed to see. Scarcely ideal.
Still, it made me think back to some of the old cheating scandals in bridge. Often the story would be similar to this games show one, involving accusations of coughing or sniffing, or foot tapping or some such signalling to illegally convey information.
A common argument by those accusing others of cheating was a sense of feeling at the table that something was wrong. My own opinion, in the absence of proper proof of a system of cheating, was that there needed to be bridge evidence, and that this was sorely missing. Often hands were interpreted as evidence of cheating when other interpretations of what took place, more innocent ones, were possible, but not considered. I was, as a consequence, entirely intolerant of the idea that a bad sniff combined with a surprising outcome in the cards, was sufficient to convict a person.
We do, after all, live under a system of innocent until proven guilty. And yet, reading this book makes me feel some sympathy for those who don't want due process, even though I disagree with them.
rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...
February 20, 2015
i was talking to a friend about the Charles Ingram case recently, probably because it was back in the light thanks to the publication of this book. i remarked that i had read co-author (and chess grandmaster) James Plaskett's original article arguing Ingram's innocence, and had found it very well-argued but ultimately unconvincing.
i must now apologise to Mr Plaskett. He and his co-author, the investigative journalist Bob Woffinden, have demolished the ITV case (also the official line) in this book. Many people, like me, will have been convinced of the guilt of Ingram, his wife and fellow quizzer Tecwen Whittock by the "Major Fraud" episode of Tonight with Trevor McDonald. It was obvious that that programme would be self-serving, but it was a shock on reading the book to find out just how duplicitous it really was.
Woffinden lays out their case in clear and readable style, demonstrating an eyebrow-raising quantity of half-truths, spins and outright lies on the part of Celador, ITV and the media, as well as the sheer logical inconsistency of many of their claims. By the end, i had completely changed my mind on this case and now agree with Woffinden and Plaskett's conclusion, that ITV should indeed pay Charles Ingram the £1 million they owe him.
i must now apologise to Mr Plaskett. He and his co-author, the investigative journalist Bob Woffinden, have demolished the ITV case (also the official line) in this book. Many people, like me, will have been convinced of the guilt of Ingram, his wife and fellow quizzer Tecwen Whittock by the "Major Fraud" episode of Tonight with Trevor McDonald. It was obvious that that programme would be self-serving, but it was a shock on reading the book to find out just how duplicitous it really was.
Woffinden lays out their case in clear and readable style, demonstrating an eyebrow-raising quantity of half-truths, spins and outright lies on the part of Celador, ITV and the media, as well as the sheer logical inconsistency of many of their claims. By the end, i had completely changed my mind on this case and now agree with Woffinden and Plaskett's conclusion, that ITV should indeed pay Charles Ingram the £1 million they owe him.
September 1, 2016
Absolutely fantastic. Well written, well researched. Exceptional. Read it and learn the other side to this 'major' travesty.
May 18, 2020
I have rarely seen a book take such an about-turn in quality. The first half of this book is a series of fantastic insights into the world of WWTBAM, and tying Charles Ingram’s own personal story to that.
The part of the book that I was looking forward to- the investigation and trial- however was clunky, badly written and written with such smug bias I found myself tiring of it repeatedly. In the end I cannot recommend this book. I wanted an account of the supposed crime and the facts laid out. This book does not do that in any meaningful way.
The first 40-50% of the book runs through the history of WWTBAM, how syndicates twisted the process, and little interesting nuggets of information about the show. It’s an excellent “look behind the magicians’ cloth” at the making and participating of an extraordinarily popular TV show, smattered with real life questions from the show when they are relevant to discussing a certain contestant.
Sure, this first half isn’t perfect. Quite early on I had to check on Amazon to make sure I had downloaded the right book because the tone was not particularly refined. Following that there is a definite ‘smugness’ in how the author explains why some questions are easy- often at great length- which strike as a petty attempt for the author to demonstrate their own quizzing prowess.
However, overlooking this is easy. After all, this is the world of quizzers, so some smugness comes with the territory.
I first noticed the book taking a strange turn when it began repeating the thoughts of Charles Ingram as indisputable fact. Of course, the authors cannot possibly know what Charles Ingram was thinking at any one time- so the lack of “Charles later told me he thought” or similar was slightly offputting. This was after the first half of the book which deals only in fact.
Not long after the quality nosedives, and sadly this is at the point which for most readers is the most interesting- the investigation, arrest and trial.
There are some paragraphs which sound like they are written when the author had a particularly bad day. They repeatedly state the police broke the law (without going into detail) and then state that this is ‘routine’ for the police to do.
All comments from the book come from Charles’s defence lawyer, who is probably not the most fair man to ask.
Slowly, parts of the defence case- just like Charles’s thoughts in previous passages- become fact. Charles had never spoken to Whitlock the book states as fact. That is not a fact and was very much up for dispute in the trial- the dozens of calls from the Ingram household to the Whitlock one perhaps tell a different story, or at least show that a different story may have existed.
While a biased book is no crime (just a disappointment to a reader who wanted to hear both sides of the argument), the authors then plunge into paragraph after paragraph of bizarre logical jumps, repetition and contradiction to make their case. The author by this stage is proclaiming that Charles’s innocence is so obvious that only an idiot would think otherwise.
The author asks who on earth would let a stranger decide how they should decide questions on a high risk gameshow. A good point (even if you ignore that whether Whitlock was a ‘stranger’ is a contested point). However the author then tells the story of how Jonathan Ross and his wife went on a Couples Special. Ross’s wife heard someone in the audience give an answer that she did not know. She then confidently gave this as the answer, and was wrong. Plainly, this is a story which proved people do listen to strangers on WWTBAM. However literally two sentences after that anecdote, the author repeats “The idea of trusting someone you’ve never even heard of would be unthinkable.” Even though his own anecdote proves it does happen!
There are so many issues like this that litter the last quarter of the book. The author asserts for example that Whittock would never have taken the deal because if Ingram then refused to pay him a commission he would have no leverage and could not have gone to police.
Except in the first part of the book the author had gone to great pains to explain that there were people who offered their services to get contestants onto the show, and offered to be their phone a friend. And these people were paid a commission of 25% on the winner’s earnings. And the author explicitly stated that the amount was always paid- leverage or no leverage. And if you want to ignore this, how’s this for leverage: “give me my cut or I go to police”? Of course Whittock could have gone to police! It wouldn’t have got him his money, but it could’ve locked up Ingram.
At this point I should be clear- I don’t know if Charles Ingram committed the crime or not. The book describes (in a very muddled way) the best arguments for the defence, and doubtless there are good points here. Whittock was no genius. There were only 3 brief calls between the Ingrams and Whittock when it was realised they would be on the same show- perhaps not enough to hatch the coughing plot. Chris Tarrant said he noticed nothing unusual either in the studio or at the small ‘afterparty’. The tapes provided by Celador to the trial had been audio mixed in a certain way which may not have replicated the conditions on set. These are all good points, often repeated several times in the book.
But there is no part of the book where the evidence against Ingram is taken seriously. The author appears to take the case that Celador, then the police, then the Crown Prosecution Service, and then the jury all agreed existed as some huge joke which never had any evidence. At times this becomes desperate.
Consider the testimony of Whitehurst. He spotted Whittock coughing at the right answers. He sat, opposite to Whittock, staring right at him. Whenever Ingram mentioned a right answer, Whitehurst watched as Whittock coughed. Whitehurst watched him for question after question. He could not be more certain of what he had seen- and what he had seen was proven true by the tape.
How does the author approach this? First by saying that because Whitehurst sold his story to the tabloids (after he told Celador and despite the tape proving him right) it should be ignored.
Next the author says that because other people didnt hear Whittock coughing, it means Whitehurst could not have been correct. The author even uses the embarrassing argument of “imagine an Ask The Audience question where 10% say yes and 90% say no”- the 10% meaning Whitehurst. Of course, the other contestants said that they had noticed nothing out of the ordinary but were concentrating on the game. They did not say that they knew nothing was amiss. Most did not even recall there being coughing- even though there clearly was.
Finally the author says that Whitehurst heard a “double cough” and goes to excruciating length to try to explain that a “double cough” is different to a “cough” and that if there was a plot then a “double cough” would have confused Ingram and therefore it could not have been part of the plot.
None of these arguments deal with how serious the testimony was, and none of them even slightly shake what Whitehurst saw. However they are repeated several times.
By 2/3s of the way through, Ingram has been convicted. The final third is a very dull attack on the criminal justice system which has been done more interestingly and far more convincingly elsewhere. The author attacks the “adversarial system” but then almost in the same breath attacks the prosecution for calling Chris Tarrant to the stand even though he did not particularly help the prosecution’s case. It sounds like the author was not happy no matter what happened.
By the bitter end of what began as an exciting story, the author is staggering drunkenly, foaming at the mouth, swinging (and missing) at everything he can.
A juror was removed at trial. Why? Because of a massive police conspiracy of course!
A failure of a British court system is that there are no transcripts! Well, actually there are, and this just hammers home the point that the author never bothered reading them.
By the end of a book I had loved so much for the first half, I was skimming. I was bored by the author’s transformation into a desperate advocate for the Ingrams.
I sadly cannot recommend this book for people wanting to find out more about the investigation and trial of Major Charles Ingram. The information is muddled and bias to the point where a quick read of a tabloid’s write-up of the guilty verdict will be just as informative and save you a lot of time.
The part of the book that I was looking forward to- the investigation and trial- however was clunky, badly written and written with such smug bias I found myself tiring of it repeatedly. In the end I cannot recommend this book. I wanted an account of the supposed crime and the facts laid out. This book does not do that in any meaningful way.
The first 40-50% of the book runs through the history of WWTBAM, how syndicates twisted the process, and little interesting nuggets of information about the show. It’s an excellent “look behind the magicians’ cloth” at the making and participating of an extraordinarily popular TV show, smattered with real life questions from the show when they are relevant to discussing a certain contestant.
Sure, this first half isn’t perfect. Quite early on I had to check on Amazon to make sure I had downloaded the right book because the tone was not particularly refined. Following that there is a definite ‘smugness’ in how the author explains why some questions are easy- often at great length- which strike as a petty attempt for the author to demonstrate their own quizzing prowess.
However, overlooking this is easy. After all, this is the world of quizzers, so some smugness comes with the territory.
I first noticed the book taking a strange turn when it began repeating the thoughts of Charles Ingram as indisputable fact. Of course, the authors cannot possibly know what Charles Ingram was thinking at any one time- so the lack of “Charles later told me he thought” or similar was slightly offputting. This was after the first half of the book which deals only in fact.
Not long after the quality nosedives, and sadly this is at the point which for most readers is the most interesting- the investigation, arrest and trial.
There are some paragraphs which sound like they are written when the author had a particularly bad day. They repeatedly state the police broke the law (without going into detail) and then state that this is ‘routine’ for the police to do.
All comments from the book come from Charles’s defence lawyer, who is probably not the most fair man to ask.
Slowly, parts of the defence case- just like Charles’s thoughts in previous passages- become fact. Charles had never spoken to Whitlock the book states as fact. That is not a fact and was very much up for dispute in the trial- the dozens of calls from the Ingram household to the Whitlock one perhaps tell a different story, or at least show that a different story may have existed.
While a biased book is no crime (just a disappointment to a reader who wanted to hear both sides of the argument), the authors then plunge into paragraph after paragraph of bizarre logical jumps, repetition and contradiction to make their case. The author by this stage is proclaiming that Charles’s innocence is so obvious that only an idiot would think otherwise.
The author asks who on earth would let a stranger decide how they should decide questions on a high risk gameshow. A good point (even if you ignore that whether Whitlock was a ‘stranger’ is a contested point). However the author then tells the story of how Jonathan Ross and his wife went on a Couples Special. Ross’s wife heard someone in the audience give an answer that she did not know. She then confidently gave this as the answer, and was wrong. Plainly, this is a story which proved people do listen to strangers on WWTBAM. However literally two sentences after that anecdote, the author repeats “The idea of trusting someone you’ve never even heard of would be unthinkable.” Even though his own anecdote proves it does happen!
There are so many issues like this that litter the last quarter of the book. The author asserts for example that Whittock would never have taken the deal because if Ingram then refused to pay him a commission he would have no leverage and could not have gone to police.
Except in the first part of the book the author had gone to great pains to explain that there were people who offered their services to get contestants onto the show, and offered to be their phone a friend. And these people were paid a commission of 25% on the winner’s earnings. And the author explicitly stated that the amount was always paid- leverage or no leverage. And if you want to ignore this, how’s this for leverage: “give me my cut or I go to police”? Of course Whittock could have gone to police! It wouldn’t have got him his money, but it could’ve locked up Ingram.
At this point I should be clear- I don’t know if Charles Ingram committed the crime or not. The book describes (in a very muddled way) the best arguments for the defence, and doubtless there are good points here. Whittock was no genius. There were only 3 brief calls between the Ingrams and Whittock when it was realised they would be on the same show- perhaps not enough to hatch the coughing plot. Chris Tarrant said he noticed nothing unusual either in the studio or at the small ‘afterparty’. The tapes provided by Celador to the trial had been audio mixed in a certain way which may not have replicated the conditions on set. These are all good points, often repeated several times in the book.
But there is no part of the book where the evidence against Ingram is taken seriously. The author appears to take the case that Celador, then the police, then the Crown Prosecution Service, and then the jury all agreed existed as some huge joke which never had any evidence. At times this becomes desperate.
Consider the testimony of Whitehurst. He spotted Whittock coughing at the right answers. He sat, opposite to Whittock, staring right at him. Whenever Ingram mentioned a right answer, Whitehurst watched as Whittock coughed. Whitehurst watched him for question after question. He could not be more certain of what he had seen- and what he had seen was proven true by the tape.
How does the author approach this? First by saying that because Whitehurst sold his story to the tabloids (after he told Celador and despite the tape proving him right) it should be ignored.
Next the author says that because other people didnt hear Whittock coughing, it means Whitehurst could not have been correct. The author even uses the embarrassing argument of “imagine an Ask The Audience question where 10% say yes and 90% say no”- the 10% meaning Whitehurst. Of course, the other contestants said that they had noticed nothing out of the ordinary but were concentrating on the game. They did not say that they knew nothing was amiss. Most did not even recall there being coughing- even though there clearly was.
Finally the author says that Whitehurst heard a “double cough” and goes to excruciating length to try to explain that a “double cough” is different to a “cough” and that if there was a plot then a “double cough” would have confused Ingram and therefore it could not have been part of the plot.
None of these arguments deal with how serious the testimony was, and none of them even slightly shake what Whitehurst saw. However they are repeated several times.
By 2/3s of the way through, Ingram has been convicted. The final third is a very dull attack on the criminal justice system which has been done more interestingly and far more convincingly elsewhere. The author attacks the “adversarial system” but then almost in the same breath attacks the prosecution for calling Chris Tarrant to the stand even though he did not particularly help the prosecution’s case. It sounds like the author was not happy no matter what happened.
By the bitter end of what began as an exciting story, the author is staggering drunkenly, foaming at the mouth, swinging (and missing) at everything he can.
A juror was removed at trial. Why? Because of a massive police conspiracy of course!
A failure of a British court system is that there are no transcripts! Well, actually there are, and this just hammers home the point that the author never bothered reading them.
By the end of a book I had loved so much for the first half, I was skimming. I was bored by the author’s transformation into a desperate advocate for the Ingrams.
I sadly cannot recommend this book for people wanting to find out more about the investigation and trial of Major Charles Ingram. The information is muddled and bias to the point where a quick read of a tabloid’s write-up of the guilty verdict will be just as informative and save you a lot of time.
September 26, 2015
(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)
The book concerns the extraordinary story of Charles Ingram, the major in the British Army who won the million-pound prize on ITV's top-rated quiz show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? After allegations were made that a fellow contestant had coughed to indicate the correct answers, Ingram was convicted on fraud charges. He then had to resign his commission and lost his reputation, his home and any prospects of future employment. Previously, he had been a well-respected army officer; now he was, according to the British press, as reviled as a mass murderer.
But he has always asserted that he won the prize fairly. Now, for the first time, Bad Show tells the complete story and explains exactly what happened on that fateful night.
This book was a bit of a slow-burn for me. The author spent a long time laying the groundwork and history of game shows and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in particular. While this part was interesting, it was a little slow getting to the point.
After that, however, the story of "that cough" is an absolute pleasure to read. The information laid out by the authors certainly made me think about the "official story" as put out by ITV. I do think that the writers have provided more than enough evidence to show that this case has more doubt than provided by the courts.
One of the eye-opening sections of this book was early on - while the authors are clear that the theories of the way the production company "weeds out" potential winners during the screening process, it seems that there is a certain procedure amongst the quiz community about how to get selected to be with a chance to be on the show in the first place, and then how to misdirect the producers by not appearing to be "too smart."
A good read, a bit slow to start, but well worth the investment if you are interested in popular culture topics.
Paul
ARH
The book concerns the extraordinary story of Charles Ingram, the major in the British Army who won the million-pound prize on ITV's top-rated quiz show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? After allegations were made that a fellow contestant had coughed to indicate the correct answers, Ingram was convicted on fraud charges. He then had to resign his commission and lost his reputation, his home and any prospects of future employment. Previously, he had been a well-respected army officer; now he was, according to the British press, as reviled as a mass murderer.
But he has always asserted that he won the prize fairly. Now, for the first time, Bad Show tells the complete story and explains exactly what happened on that fateful night.
This book was a bit of a slow-burn for me. The author spent a long time laying the groundwork and history of game shows and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in particular. While this part was interesting, it was a little slow getting to the point.
After that, however, the story of "that cough" is an absolute pleasure to read. The information laid out by the authors certainly made me think about the "official story" as put out by ITV. I do think that the writers have provided more than enough evidence to show that this case has more doubt than provided by the courts.
One of the eye-opening sections of this book was early on - while the authors are clear that the theories of the way the production company "weeds out" potential winners during the screening process, it seems that there is a certain procedure amongst the quiz community about how to get selected to be with a chance to be on the show in the first place, and then how to misdirect the producers by not appearing to be "too smart."
A good read, a bit slow to start, but well worth the investment if you are interested in popular culture topics.
Paul
ARH
December 5, 2015
(I received a free copy from net galley in exchange of an honest review)
The book was actually better than I expected. At first I thought it would be just an appeal on behalf of Charles Ingram, perhaps because the title gives this impression, but after reading it I felt it was more than that. The author goes beyond describing what happened on the day Charles Ingram participated on the Who wants to be a millionaire, but also by giving a background description of the ITV's show as well as all the 'cheats' that goes behind the entertainment business. It's amazing to see what all these big television producers will do to make a profit on the expense of the ordinary folk and specially how the judicial system can be biased by the media. It was well written, bringing facts to light and explaining what should simply be understood as common sense.
The book was actually better than I expected. At first I thought it would be just an appeal on behalf of Charles Ingram, perhaps because the title gives this impression, but after reading it I felt it was more than that. The author goes beyond describing what happened on the day Charles Ingram participated on the Who wants to be a millionaire, but also by giving a background description of the ITV's show as well as all the 'cheats' that goes behind the entertainment business. It's amazing to see what all these big television producers will do to make a profit on the expense of the ordinary folk and specially how the judicial system can be biased by the media. It was well written, bringing facts to light and explaining what should simply be understood as common sense.
May 28, 2020
I read this after watching the ITV drama 'Quiz', and becoming absolutely fascinated with the case itself. And this book does contain a lot of information and lays out the facts of what went down - but there's also an awful lot of padding. There's around 30 pages just about historical cheating within various sporting and gaming events. There's a lot of history of various contestants.
However, the book did pretty much do what it set out to do - it convinced me that the trial and the verdict was unfair. I'm still not totally convinced that there wasn't any sort of cheating going on, but I absolutely think that it should have been ruled as a mistrial, and that there's no way this jury was impartial, or that the evidence that the prosecution had was sufficient. It was all a total farce.
However, the book did pretty much do what it set out to do - it convinced me that the trial and the verdict was unfair. I'm still not totally convinced that there wasn't any sort of cheating going on, but I absolutely think that it should have been ruled as a mistrial, and that there's no way this jury was impartial, or that the evidence that the prosecution had was sufficient. It was all a total farce.
April 13, 2015
This book fascinated me! It also scared me. It shows how easily one can be misrepresented by the legal system. Bob Woffinden destroys the prosecutions case against Major Ingram and the "coughing" system he allegedly conspired to use in winning the million. I'm not saying he didn't do it, but from the information presented in this book, there was no evidence strong enough to support that he did. This is a case of guilty until proven innocent, and it shows how that foundation on thought truly doesn't work.
November 2, 2015
What an amazing book! I came away with a whole new outlook on the Ingram case and the Ingrams in general. No stone was unturned by the authors, which was desperately needed. Extremely well written and paced. I am recommending this to everyone!
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!
December 28, 2020
Charles Ingram was innocent !!! 😤😤😤
really well researched book, so much knowledge not just about the case but about the history of WWTBAM. Thoroughly enjoyed .
really well researched book, so much knowledge not just about the case but about the history of WWTBAM. Thoroughly enjoyed .
June 22, 2021
Not Guilty. This is Major Charles Ingram's final answer. given long after he'd run out of friends to phone, and when the resources of ITV and the tabloid media were ranged against him so his odds were never anywhere near 50/50. Unsurprisingly, he lost a court case he couldn't afford and didn't know how to defend.
Sadly for Ingram and his wife the answer comes far too late to help him - broke, busted and disgusted, his life is in ruins, while ITV continues to make millions out of peddling his story, not least from its own hour-long docco "Major Fraud", ironically fronted by that well-known investigative journalist and bastion of truthful reporting, Martin Bashir. A rehash of that was shown in January this year but that's literally all it was - a re-telling of ITV's side of the story.
Unbelievably for a British court of law ITV was both the complainant in the case as well as the forensic expert on which the case rested, and it was the provider of and sole custodian of that forensic evidence - the audio-visual recording of the show.
Make that recordings.
Anyone who knows anything about this environment will know that it's possible to alter the balance between audio channels before you make a copy of a tape. ITV did exactly that when providing tapes as "evidence" to the police and the court, giving Mr Plod and his jurors an an utterly unrealistic version of what was heard in the studio. Chris Tarrant never noticed any coughing at the time, he said, but the altered tape has made selected coughs - nine out nearly two hundred - artificially loud, so that nobody can miss the pantomime coughing.
There's a lot more that makes this a risky conviction, not least the apparent bias of the judge, who wouldn't let the jury visit the scene of the crime, where they would have realised at once that the tape "evidence" was totally misleading. Also at fault are Ingram's defence team, who failed to establish this in court, and failed to establish that there was absolutely no sign of any proper chain of custody relating to the tapes. ITV kept the originals and refused to produce them to the defence, on the spurious grounds that it took months to "analyse" them properly. Their sound engineer even said so in court
Worst of all, and most telling, was the defence lawyer's failure to use this to his client's advantage. If the sound engineer took months to work out who was coughing, and when, how was Ingram supposed to do it in a few seconds on the night when he was under pressure that turns most people into bumbling idiots? Yet the prosecution rested entirely on Ingram's ability to identify and respond to "significant coughs" made by a man he had never met or seen and which were inaudible to the vastly experienced TV presenter sat a metre in front of him.
This was a stitch-up, but the cheating story makes better headlines.
Sadly for Ingram and his wife the answer comes far too late to help him - broke, busted and disgusted, his life is in ruins, while ITV continues to make millions out of peddling his story, not least from its own hour-long docco "Major Fraud", ironically fronted by that well-known investigative journalist and bastion of truthful reporting, Martin Bashir. A rehash of that was shown in January this year but that's literally all it was - a re-telling of ITV's side of the story.
Unbelievably for a British court of law ITV was both the complainant in the case as well as the forensic expert on which the case rested, and it was the provider of and sole custodian of that forensic evidence - the audio-visual recording of the show.
Make that recordings.
Anyone who knows anything about this environment will know that it's possible to alter the balance between audio channels before you make a copy of a tape. ITV did exactly that when providing tapes as "evidence" to the police and the court, giving Mr Plod and his jurors an an utterly unrealistic version of what was heard in the studio. Chris Tarrant never noticed any coughing at the time, he said, but the altered tape has made selected coughs - nine out nearly two hundred - artificially loud, so that nobody can miss the pantomime coughing.
There's a lot more that makes this a risky conviction, not least the apparent bias of the judge, who wouldn't let the jury visit the scene of the crime, where they would have realised at once that the tape "evidence" was totally misleading. Also at fault are Ingram's defence team, who failed to establish this in court, and failed to establish that there was absolutely no sign of any proper chain of custody relating to the tapes. ITV kept the originals and refused to produce them to the defence, on the spurious grounds that it took months to "analyse" them properly. Their sound engineer even said so in court
Worst of all, and most telling, was the defence lawyer's failure to use this to his client's advantage. If the sound engineer took months to work out who was coughing, and when, how was Ingram supposed to do it in a few seconds on the night when he was under pressure that turns most people into bumbling idiots? Yet the prosecution rested entirely on Ingram's ability to identify and respond to "significant coughs" made by a man he had never met or seen and which were inaudible to the vastly experienced TV presenter sat a metre in front of him.
This was a stitch-up, but the cheating story makes better headlines.
January 30, 2021
I really enjoy these kinds of books that go into forensic detail to reveal the intricacies behind stories we all thought we knew inside out.
I am no longer convinced Ingram cheated. And, as now seems likely, if he really is innocent, what a horrendous injustice! He literally did not one single thing wrong.
And ITV and their lawyers behaved appallingly.
Brilliant deconstruction of the case by the writers.
I am no longer convinced Ingram cheated. And, as now seems likely, if he really is innocent, what a horrendous injustice! He literally did not one single thing wrong.
And ITV and their lawyers behaved appallingly.
Brilliant deconstruction of the case by the writers.
March 7, 2025
Engrossing book about the scandalous cough that never happened & a guilty verdict with no evidence
June 19, 2019
Charles Ingram was found guilty of cheating on the UK quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire back in 2001. Was he the victim of gross injustice? I am still unsure, although this book gives a good case for the defence. This was an interesting read and included lots of behind the scenes information along with an insight into other quiz shows, although it was a bit meandering in places. More than anything I was astonished to discover the lengths some people went to to get onto the show. Read it and be amazed.
March 30, 2017
Very well-written account of the infamous TV quiz show scandal, which aims to prove the innocence of the alleged cheats. The arguments presented are very convincing, and reveal serious weaknesses in the British criminal prosecution system. It is still very relevant, as it covers the important issue of trial by media, and the real effects that this can have on ordinary people.
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