Date: 23rd April 2003

Millionaire Cheat To Be Made Into Movie


Major Charles Ingram gave a performance worthy of an Oscar as he bluffed his way to the top prize on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

And now Celador - the company which produces the show - is planning to turn the scam into a blockbuster movie. So the hunt is now on to find actors to play the parts of the terrible trio at the heart of the scandal.

The story of how Ingram, his wife Diana and their partner in crime Tecwen Whittock attempted to cheat the show out of £1million has kept the nation enthralled for months.

They - along with host Chris Tarrant - will all be central characters in the movie.

The Major's attempt to bag £1million by using coded coughing was the most audacious attempt at cheating in the history of TV quiz shows and landed the Ingrams and Whittock with suspended jail sentences after a 22-day trial at Southwark crown court.

Plans for the film are still at an early stage - but one question is on everybody's lips.

Who will play the bumbling, greedy Major, his hard-faced wife Diana and their coughing cohort Whittock. And what about their heroic host, Chris Tarrant, who kept on going, unaware of their wicked plot?

While the film-makers ponder who to cast as the main protagonists, we wondered who the Major himself would choose.

Below, we've listed four possible candidates for each of the four leading roles - A, B, C or D. And we've also included how we think Major Ingram would have stumbled into picking the perfect person for the part - without any help from suspiciously noisy members of the audience, of course (cough, cough)…


Source: Mirror.co.uk

Source: Press Release