Judge sums up Millionaire trial

Judge sums up Millionaire trial

Mr Ingram and his wife Diana deny cheating

An army major was either a genuine winner or a fraudster when he left the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? hot seat with the top prize, the trial judge has said.

Summing up on the 18th day of what he described as a "most unusual case", Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC said the crown's stance was that Charles Ingram was a cheat who had used an accomplice's coughs to guide him to the jackpot.

Mr Ingram, from Easterton, Wiltshire, and his wife Diana, both 39, are accused of cheating their way to the prize with the help of deliberately timed coughs by college lecturer Tecwen Whittock, 53, from Cardiff.

All three deny "procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception" - namely £1m on 10 September 2001.

Judge Rivlin told the court: "The prosecution say there can be no doubt about it. He and his wife and Tecwen Whittock were fraudsters and the evidence placed before you in this case is clear for all to see.

"They say here was a fraud, a scam if ever there was one."

Accusations denied

They had contended that Mr Whittock, a "fastest finger first" contestant at the time, had used a series of coughs to guide Mr Ingram to most of the right answers, while the officer's wife had allegedly "helped set the fraud up".

For their part, said the judge, the three defendants had gone into the witness box at London's Southwark Crown Court to "strenuously deny any kind of dishonesty", with the Ingrams maintaining the win was genuine.

The lecturer had insisted he had not only suffered a persistent cough for many years, but that it had caused him considerable distress on the night of the show.

The question the jury had to decide was whether the major left the Millionaire set at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, as a "genuine millionaire or a fraudster".

"Which was it?" the judge asked.

On Monday the court had been forced to rise early because of a bout of uncontrollable coughing among some jury members.

After making sure they had recovered, the judge began his day-long summing up by referring to the main points in the prosecution and defence cases.

The judge sent the jury home and will resume his summing up on Wednesday.