Charles Ingram (born August 6, 1963) is a former British Army Major who made headlines in the United Kingdom when he was accused of cheating on the television show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. Despite being convicted of deception, Ingram maintains that he did not cheat.
Ingram is a BSc Civil Engineering graduate from Kingston Polytechnic, a MSc Corporate Management graduate from Cranfield University, Chartered Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development, Member of the Chartered Management Institute, Member of The Society of Authors, and member of Mensa. In 1986 he trained for the Army at Sandhurst and was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Engineers. Ingram was promoted to the rank of Major in 1995, and in 1999 he served in Bosnia for six months on NATO peacekeeping duties.
The ITV1 programme was produced by Celador at Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. The show, hosted by Chris Tarrant, was recorded on 9 & 10 September 2001. Ingram won the £1,000,000 prize but the payout was suspended when he was accused of cheating by having an accomplice cough when he read out the correct answers. Following a trial at Southwark Crown Court lasting seven weeks including jury deliberation for three-and-a-half days which ended soon after a jury member was evicted for discussing the case in public, Charles Ingram, his wife Diana Ingram and Tecwen Whittock were convicted by a majority verdict of 'procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception' on 7 April 2003.
On the day of the verdict, the Ingrams were each given 18-month prison sentences suspended for two years, each fined £15,000, and each ordered to pay £10,000 towards prosecution costs. Within two months of the verdict and sentence, the trial judge ordered the Ingrams to pay additional defense costs orders, Charles £40,000 and Diana £25,000.
The Army Board invited Major Ingram to resign his commission. He retired on 19 August 2003 with his state-earned pension of seventeen years.
On 19 May 2004 the Court of Appeal denied Ingram leave to appeal against his conviction and upheld his sentence. The same court quashed his wife's fine and prosecution costs. On 5 October 2004 the House of Lords denied Ingram his leave to appeal against his fine and prosecution costs, and he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. On 20 October 2004 the original trial judge reduced Ingram's defense costs order to £20,000 and Diana Ingram's defense costs order to £5,000. On 21 May 2005 Ingram appealed against his conviction to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The CCRC completed its review in Autumn 2006 concluding that 'there was insufficient prospect of overturning the conviction'.
Charles Ingram declared bankruptcy on 25 November 2004 and was discharged on 25 November 2005. Diana Ingram declared bankruptcy on 11 November 2005 and was discharged on 10 July 2006. Charles Ingram is now a novelist and his first thriller, The Network, was published on 27 April 2006. His second thriller, Deep Siege, is published in September 2007.
An essay written by James Plaskett in favour of the innocence of Charles Ingram, his wife, and Whittock led to the journalist Bob Woffinden, who had a long time interest in miscarriages of justice, publishing a two-page article in the 9 October 2004 edition of the British newspaper the Daily Mail, entitled 'Is The Coughing Major Innocent?'
A description of the video tape played in court is at . In court Ingram claimed the video tape was 'unrepresentative of what I heard', indeed he continues to assert that it was 'unfairly manipulated'. He claims that he neither listened for, encouraged, nor noticed any coughing. The prosecution alleged that of the 192 coughs recorded during his second-night performance, 32 were recorded from the ten Fastest Finger First contestants and that 19 of the 32 coughs clearly heard on the video tape recorded louder than both Ingram's and Tarrant's voices, were 'significant'. Tarrant also denied hearing any coughing, claiming he was too busy to notice.
Whitehurst, another contestant who has appeared on the show as a Fastest Finger First contestant on four occasions, contacted Celador a week after the show, to share with them his concerns about Ingram's peculiar performance. Celador told him they were already investigating concerns about cheating, and that they were considering the possibility of coughing as a source of assistance. Whitehurst told Celador he saw Whittock coughing. Celador's MD, Paul Smith, advised Whitehurst to contact the police if he had concerns. Instead, Whitehurst contacted The Sun newspaper. Three days later, after The Sun had printed the exclusive about the allegation, Whitehurst, who had by now approached the police as 'Horace' via email, spoke to them for the first time. Graham [aka Larry] Whitehurst told police during interview that he saw another contestant, Whittock, cough once during the last question and that he thought it might have helped Ingram. He also said that what he saw could have been a 'complete coincidence'.
Over the next eighteen months, it transpired that Whitehurst had met face-to-face with Celador on at least four separate occasions between September 2001 and the trial in March 2003, including on one occasion with their solicitors. In court, Whitehurst was adamant that he had known the answers to Ingram's questions, and that he had been able to anticipate coughing from an early stage on the night, and that he was entirely convinced coughing had helped Ingram. It seems strange that Whitehurst did not immediately mention the cheating that evening in the studio, bar, or elsewhere, for he described himself in court as 'extremely angry'. It also seems strange that, when 'watching Mr Whittock intently from early on', as he described his focus during the recording on Whittock in court, he did not notice Whittock say 'No' on 'Berlin' or see him cough more than once during the £1M question when five of nineteen 'significant coughs' were alleged by the prosecutor to have been made by Whittock.
Whittock has suffered from a persistent cough for his entire life . This could either explain his coughs during the show or be a cover for cough signals.
Whittock had insisted he had had a genuine cough caused by a combination of hay fever and a dust allergy. It was nothing more than 'coincidence' if his throat problem had coincided with the right answer. He also insisted that he had not known the answers to three of the questions he allegedly helped with. Police, however, found the answer to one of them in a hand-written general knowledge book at his home, along with the answer to another question he said he had not known but was not said to have helped with .
Davis, the floor manager, said that as soon as the coughing came to his notice during the recording he decided to find out who was responsible. 'The loudest coughing was coming from Tecwen in seat number three', he claimed. 'He was talking to the person to his left when I was observing him, and then he turned towards the set and the hot seat to cough.' Whittock said in court that 'you do not cough into someone's face' . Despite searching for any form of assistance during the recording Davis did not notice the word 'no' or deduce that coughing was assisting Ingram.
Around the time of the trial Whittock intimated he could hardly have been any help to Ingram because he was a 'serial quiz show loser' implying that if Ingram was going to cheat he would have teamed-up with someone much more likely to be of assistance. It was reported that during the trial that he 'portrayed himself ... as a serial quiz show failure ... (who) said his performance on a number of TV and radio programmes had been less than dazzling.' However, Whittock twice won the Wales heat of Brain of Britain (on BBC Radio 4) and in one semi-final was only narrowly beaten into runner-up spot by quiz legend Daphne Fowler.
Tarrant, who drank champagne with the Ingrams in their dressing room, said he was convinced the major was genuine when he signed the £1 million cheque. 'If I thought there was anything wrong, I certainly would not have signed it.' When asked whether the atmosphere in the dressing room was tense after the show as had been alleged by an employee, Ms Winstanley, Tarrant replied: 'No, not at all. They seemed as normal as people who have just won a million pounds would be in the situation'.
Celador employees produced and reviewed various compilation tapes, before and after contacting the police. Celador and their editing company, Editworks, retained all the tapes during the case and reproduced all tapes for court.
In court, Smith confirmed that his company had previously produced a television programme involving witnesses about the case, for broadcast on ITV after the trial. This was subsequently broadcast on ITV1 a month after the trial as 'Tonight With Trevor MacDonald - Major Fraud', which was credited with over 17 million viewers. Two weeks later the same programme broadcast another show entitled 'Final Act', which was credited with over 5 million viewers.
The trial judge summed up the case by stating to the jury that the tapes and Mr Whitehurst were the two pieces of 'direct evidence' before describing the act as a 'schoolboy prank'.
Ingram said his discursive and apparently indecisive manner when answering questions was due to nervousness and for effect. 'There was a degree of wishing to be good on television and be a bit dramatic. What I said, thinking out loud, and what I actually meant were not the same thing. It was a very stressful period.'
The producer and decision-maker on the night, David Briggs, maintained a low profile throughout the case and did not testify in court. Almost all Celador employees present on the night, who made up most of the prosecution witnesses, said they became suspicious early on during the second night as Ingram's performance on the first night had confirmed their pre-show beliefs that he was unintelligent and would not last long. In court, Tarrant described him as 'Tim, nice but dim'. To refute the allegations, Ingram took an invigilated IQ test shortly before the trial, and was found to have an IQ that lies within the top two per cent of the population (it allowed him to join Mensa). Ingram, who is highly qualified, has repeatedly suggested that success on the show is more about knowledge than intelligence.
It was suggested in the media that Ingram took a considerable amount of time on the second night - on one question 'half an hour' - to answer each of the questions. Such was the rumour-mill, The Sun reported he had been in the hot seat for three hours on the second night. The Special Enquiry Team of New Scotland Yard were reportedly keen to learn whether this may have been a delaying tactic to allow someone outside the studio to look up the questions on a computer or the internet, before sending a text message to a mobile phone held by an audience member. The audience member would then cough corresponding to one of the four options.
In fact, and including any delay caused by the host who does much of the talking and controls the quiz, the time between the questions given (flashed-up on screen) and answers accepted (green light highlighting correct answer) on the night alledged cheating took place were as follows:
A subjective analysis of the uncut recording broadcast on ITV2 shows that of the above time, Ingram was responsible for considerably less than ten minutes. On the first night Ingram played, an earlier contestant took 24 minutes on one answer .
Celador had been concerned about the possibility of someone cheating all the way to the top prize, and introduced elaborate security measures. During recording, one camera was permanently trained on the contestants' faces to check that they didn't look away for signals from the audience. Another camera watched friends or relatives in the audience to ensure they were not sending signals. As an additional precaution, players were always positioned with their backs to any supporters in the audience. [10]
On 11 April 2007 Ingram was convicted of assaulting a 13 year old youth who deliberately coughed into his face as he ran past while out jogging. Ingram was sentenced with an Absolute Discharge after the youth admitted under cross-examination by Ingram's solicitor that the cough was disgusting and that Ingram did not, as he had originally told the police and earlier testified in court, 'shove him against a wall'. The court heard how Ingram had grabbed the threatening youth by his lapels and said, 'That was disgusting. If you do that again you will be in trouble. Do you understand?' [11]
