Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (UK game show)

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Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Genre	Game show
Creator(s)	David Briggs
Starring	Chris Tarrant
Production
Producer(s)	Celador
Running time	60 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ITV1
Original run	4 September 1998 – Present
Links
IMDb profile

In the United Kingdom, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers a maximum cash prize of one million pounds for correctly answering successive multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The show was exported to many other countries, all of which follow the same general format (see Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?).

The programme is hosted by Chris Tarrant and produced by Celador. It is based on a format devised by David Briggs, who, along with Steve Knight and Mike Whitehill, devised a number of the promotional games for Chris Tarrant's breakfast show on Capital FM radio. The original working title for the show was Cash Mountain.

When it first aired on 4 September 1998, it was a surprising twist on the gameshow genre. Only one contestant plays at a time (similar to some radio quizzes), and the emphasis is on suspense rather than speed. There is no time limit to answer questions, and contestants are given the question before they must decide whether to attempt an answer.

Rights to both the format and all UK episodes of the show were put up for sale by Celador in March 2006, as the first step toward the sale of Celador's production division. These have been acquired by the Dutch company 2waytraffic, and are in the process of being signed over.

1 Broadcast details
2 Specific UK format
3 Text Game (Walkaway)
4 Specials
5 Controversies
6 Spoofs and Parodies
7 Million pound winners
8 External links

[edit] Broadcast details

Originally broadcast on successive evenings over several weeks, it now appears weekly on ITV1 (originally ITV) in a primetime slot on Saturday evenings. The show lasts for one hour (including commercial breaks). The first contestant was Graham Elwell, who won £64,000.

As of January 2006 it is in its 19th series, over 400 shows have been screened. At its peak in 1999 the show pulled in up to 19 million viewers (an astonishing one in three of the British population), often when it only had a half-hour timeslot, before declining to around eight million by 2003 [1]. Current ratings as of 2006 are around six million.

Classic episodes of the show are shown every weekday on the digital TV channel Challenge.

In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was placed 23rd.

[edit] Specific UK format

The show follows the usual Who Wants to Be a Millionaire format, but has some specific differences.

Members of the public apply to appear on the show by calling a premium rate telephone number or sending a premium rate text message. Applications can also be made at the ITV website, via a system of £1 "credits". Contestants are chosen from the large number of applicants through a combination of random selection and ability to answer test general knowledge questions.

In one series the audience were asked to vote (secretly) on every question, and their answers were revealed, for interest only, after the question had been answered. This feature now seems to have been abandoned. The host does, however, sometimes reveal the answer chosen by the contestant's friend sitting in the audience ("I can tell you that your friend so-and-so thinks that it's such-and-such".)

Tarrant's catchphrases on the show include "Is that your final answer?", "But we don't want to give you that" (meaning that he would like the contestant to go on and win even more money), and more recently at the end of the show, "But the cashpoint is now closed for tonight". Tarrant is also famous for his "inscrutable" face – a quizzical grimace designed to give the contestant no clue as to which answer is correct.

[edit] Text Game (Walkaway)

Since 2004, the UK version has included a feature which the ITV website [2] calls "Walkaway", but which on the show itself is always referred to as "The Text Game". When a contestant chooses to "walk away" with the money already won (rather than attempt the next question), the question is thrown open to the viewers at home. Viewers have 30 seconds to text back the answer, at a cost of £1 per text. At the end of the 30 seconds, the answer is revealed. A winner is chosen at random from all those who answered correctly within the permitted time, and this person is awarded a prize of £1,000.

The new series has changed this part slightly. The game begins when a contestant in the hot seat has been asked a question by Chris immediately prior to the commencement of the commercial break. Chris then offers the question to the viewing audience at home, and you have the period from when the question is offered until the end of the commercial break

[edit] Specials

Variants on the format are screened from time to time as specials – such as celebrities playing for charity, couples games (where both partners must agree on the answer), Mother's Day specials, Valentines specials etc.

[edit] Controversies

[edit] Incorrect answer to question accepted

In March 1999, contestant Tony Kennedy faced the question "Theoretically, what is the minimum number of strokes with which a tennis player can win a set?", with the optional answers 12, 24, 36 and 48. The contestant works out that you need 4 shots to win a game, and there are 6 games in a set, so the answer is 24. He declares this, and wins the £64,000 question.

However, this answer proved to be wrong. Eagled-eyed tennis followers noticed that a player can win a game without playing a shot if their opponent is serving, as he may double-fault every time - as a result, the correct answer is technically 12.

The Daily Mirror newspaper reported this the next day, with the pun headline 'Fault!'. The programme acknowledged the mistake and apologised for it, but Kennedy was allowed to keep the money he won (£125,000, as he got the following question correct as well).

Questions on the programme usually rely on general knowledge rather than logic, and are not usually 'trick' questions, so this one probably should not have slipped through, as it contains a sizeable grey area.

[edit] The Major Charles Ingram affair

In an episode of the British show recorded on 10 September 2001, Major Charles Ingram won the £1,000,000 prize. During the recording it was noticed that a suspicious pattern of coughing could be heard. The Major's unusual behaviour in the hot seat also drew attention. When subsequently analysed it became apparent that another contestant, Tecwen Whittock, seated in contestants row was offering Major Ingram prompts in the form of coughs, indicating the correct answers. On many of the questions Major Ingram read aloud all of the four answers, until a cough was heard, before choosing his answer. In some cases he even dismissed an answer, read aloud the answers again, and picked an answer he had earlier dismissed. It also appeared that Whittock appeared to say no while coughing at the same time when Ingram was repeating the same answer, while thinking about the question.

After Charles Ingram won the million, Whittock won the next Fastest Finger First game and so took to the hotseat. He reached the £8,000 mark, but dropped back to £1,000 after answering a cookery question incorrectly.

Further investigation revealed that the Major's wife Diana (who had won £32,000 on a previous show, as had his brother-in-law) had organized the scam. A number of pagers had been purchased and telephone records revealed what appeared to be a practice session for another plan to cheat the system that was not subsequently carried out. The plan was for the Major to hide four pagers on his body that would vibrate when an accomplice called the pager indicating the correct answer. Following a trial at Southwark Crown Court lasting a month, Major Ingram, his wife Diana and Tecwen Whittock were convicted of "procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception" on 7 April 2003. Ingram and his wife were each given suspended 18-month prison sentences and fined £15,000, while Whittock received a 12-month suspended sentence and was fined £10,000. Together with legal costs, it was estimated that the Ingrams will have to pay £50,000 in total.

Despite the conviction, the Ingrams and Tecwen Whittock continue to deny that they colluded or acted dishonestly. They plan to appeal the court ruling. An ITV1 documentary entitled Millionaire: a Major Fraud, presented by Martin Bashir, was broadcast in Britain on 21 April 2003. The first advert in the first advertisement break in the documentary was for cough medicine, after a brainwave in the broadcaster's advertising department. Excerpts from the 2001 recording were broadcast with enhanced audio highlighting the coughs emanating from Tecwen Whittock. Immediately afterwards the full programme in its original format was broadcast on ITV2. The documentary included additional video recorded during the programme of Mrs Ingram sitting in the audience and apparently prompting the Major with her own coughing and making glances in the direction of Mr Whittock. The documentary also contained interviews with production staff and other contestants present at the recording of the original programme describing how they felt that something unusual had been happening. Major Ingram described the documentary as "one of the greatest TV editing con tricks in history".

On 24 July 2003 the British Army ordered Charles Ingram to resign his commission as a Major.

James Plaskett has argued in favour of the innocence of Ingram, his wife and Whittock. [3] Plaskett's essay led to 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? Jon Ronson, who attended the trial and had written two articles about it in The Guardian wrote a piece published on 17 July 2006, entitled Are the Millionaire three innocent? [4]

In January 2006, Plaskett himself made it into the hot seat and won £250,000. An unusual ambience between player and host was noticed and remarked upon in the media.

[edit] Llewelyn-Bowen second chance

In a Valentine's Day special broadcast on 11 February 2006, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and his wife Jackie appeared on the show to play for their charity. They got all the way up to the £1 million question, before answering wrongly and losing £468,000. For the first time ever, Celador let Laurence and his wife retry the show after the company claimed that the last question "didn't meet their standards". After returning and being shown a different £1 million question ( Who was the first man to go into space twice? ) the couple decided not to risk losing £468,000 for the second time, and walked away having earned £500,000 for their chosen charity, The Shooting Star Foundation, of which Laurence and his wife are both patrons. This amount is the highest that any celebrity couple has won on any British edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. The misleading question was "Translated from the Latin, what is the motto of United States?" The wrong answer chosen was "In God We Trust", which is original English, and has been in official use since 1956. The correct answer was "Out of many, one", which is translated from a Latin phrase E pluribus unum.

[edit] Spoofs and Parodies

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was spoofed on an episode of Dick and Dom in da Bungalow on March 4, 2006. The Chris Tarrant impersonator, Chris Muckey, asked the contestants a variety of 'hilarious' questions with rather obvious answers (e.g., What are you sitting on? A) Chair, B) Tree, C) Hippo, D) TV?). Those contestants who got a wrong answer were 'gunged' with Creamy Muck-Muck.

Whilst not exactly a spoof, since the real set was used and Chris Tarrant did appear, the show appeared in a sketch on the BBC Northern Ireland comedy sketch show Dry Your Eyes, starring the Hole in the Wall Gang. The paranoid "Irishman" character Gerry Murphy was in the hot seat and accused Tarrant and the English producers of deliberately making it hard for him just because he's Irish. He won the million pounds in the end, but when Tarrant said "I know someone who'll be having a few celebratory drinks tonight!", he ranted "Just because I'm Irish, I must be an alcoholic? Wee Gerry Murphy can't wait to spend half a million pounds on the Guinness, and blow the other half-million on a horse!" He then tore up the cheque, shouting "Well, let me tell you, I want no more to do with your English million pounds, you can stuff it!", and he stormed off, before returning and saying "I still get to have a pint of Guinness in the green room, don't I?".

The show has also been spoofed on a Nickelodeon sketch show, The Amanda Show where Amanda Bynes plays host to other characters, in 'So You Wanna Win 5 Dollars?' which resembles 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'

[edit] Million pound winners

Winners of the major prize (including Charles Ingram - who was convicted of deception in relation to his winning and never actually received his prize - and in chronological order, together with original broadcast date):