Quiz: Chris Tarrant brands Charles Ingram ‘a rotter, a cad and a bandit’

Original ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ host in feud with ‘coughing major’

Chris Tarrant has escalated his feud with former Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? contestant Charles Ingram, calling him “a rotter, a cad and a bandit”.

The former game show presenter’s comments come after Ingram said Tarrant “suffers from delusions of grandeur”.

Ingram and Tarrant have been slinging insults at each other in recent days, as interest in the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? cheating scandal resurfaced in the wake of ITV’s new drama Quiz.

Quiz tells the story of how, in 2003, Ingram, his wife Diana and their alleged accomplice Tecwen Whittock were found guilty of conspiring to cheat on the show, after producers noticed suspicious coughs from Whittock when correct answers were read out.

In a new interview with The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X this morning, Tarrant said of the new series: “It was actually very well done but it is a drama, it’s not factual. So most of those conversations were made up because that’s what playwrights do. I mean, the bottom line is [Ingram] is a rotter and a cad and a bandit and he was guilty. No question in my mind at all that he was guilty.”

Tarrant also revealed he has “beef” with the drama, criticising it for suggesting the Ingrams could be innocent.​

Reflecting on the night Ingram appeared on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Tarrant said: “The studio that night was like a madhouse. People were screaming and gasping just because he was so, you know he’s a serving British Army Major who’s on, I don’t know £30k a year, rented accommodation or whatever, and he’s going, ‘Oh yes £500,000, let’s risk it, let’s play,’ and all this and you think, ‘Why would you do that?’”