James Plaskett

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Harold James Plaskett (born Cyprus, March 18, 1960) was British Chess Champion in 1990, awarded the International Grandmaster title in 1985, and is also a writer, blogger, sometime explorer/cryptozoologist and legal campaigner. Married in 1995 to writer Fiona Pitt-Kethley, they have a son, Alexander, born 1996, and live in Cartagena, Spain.

Plaskett organised and led a 1999 National Geographic expedition to Bermuda to follow up reports of "Octopus giganteus" near the island, but was unsuccessful in filming it. [1]

He has written nine chess books and also one quasi-autobiographical one, Coincidences.

He appeared unsuccessfully several times on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and then drew on his experiences to write a defence of Charles Ingram, his wife, Diana, and Tecwen Whittock, who had been found guilty in April 2003 of conspiring to help Ingram win the £1 million top prize by coughing to signal the right answers [2].[This essay led to an article by Bob Woffinden in The Daily Mail of October 9, 2004 - Is The Coughing Major Innocent?, and also prompted a reconsideration of the case in The Guardian Comment is free blog on July 17, 2006 from Jon Ronson [3]

Woffinden and Ronson had both been initially sceptical.

At last, in January 2006, [4], he won £250,000. [5] [6][7]

Karl Shuker, another Briton with an interest in both cryptozoological expeditions and unusual phenomena, had previously reached the same figure.

His brother, Allan, invented the snickometer device which is used globally to assist in umpiring decisions in cricket.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ [2]
  3. ^ [3]
  4. ^ Chess Base
  5. ^ Daily Mirrow
  6. ^ Daily Mirrow
  7. ^ Daily Mirror

[edit] External links