Quiz case major 'made cheating obvious'

An army major accused of cheating on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire denied yesterday that his wife had been angry with him for making his scheme a "bit too obvious".

Charles Ingram, who allegedly won the £1m prize with the help of an accomplice's coded coughs, said suggestions of a dressing room confrontation minutes after his success were "definitely wrong".

Prosecution witnesses had been "mistaken" when they described his wife as being "pale and shaky" and had spoken of "something going on" between them.

"We were like any other million-pound winners," he told Southwark Crown Court in London. Even the game show host, Chris Tarrant, "said we were", the veteran of the Bosnian conflict reminded Nicholas Hilliard, for the prosecution. But the barrister persisted: "Was she angry with you by wondering whether you had made it all a bit too obvious?"

"No," the Royal Engineers officer replied.

Major Ingram, 39, and his wife, Diana, 38, a nursery nurse, of Easterton, Wiltshire, and Tecwen Whittock, 53, of Whitchurch, Cardiff, each deny a single charge of "procuring a valuable security by deception" on 10 September 2001. The Crown has claimed Mr Whittock, a college lecturer, who was one of the 10 Fastest Finger First contestants while the major was answering Tarrant's questions, used a total of 19 strategically timed coughs to help Major Ingram to choose most of the correct answers.

Major Ingram, who was spending his third day giving evidence from a witness box he has likened to the quiz show's "hot seat", was also asked about pagers.

The Crown has suggested the couple might have considered using four of them to help the officer win before abandoning the idea in favour of the coughing ploy after learning Mr Whittock was to appear on the programme at the same time.

Asked who had sent a long series of numeric pager messages the evening before his first televised appearance, the soldier insisted his wife must have been responsible. "I have never used a pager in my life," he told the jury of eight women and four men more than once.

Mr Hilliard suggested: "You had these pagers with you [in your house]?" The major replied: "Definitely not."

"You were practising a dishonest scheme for the show," the barrister then alleged. The major replied: "No, we certainly weren't." The trial continues.