Quiz - ITV

[southeastdweller]

It's a three part drama about the Who Wants to be a Millionaire coughing scandal in 2001.

www.radiotimes.com/news/2020-04-08/quiz-itv-drama-air-date-cast-trailer/

Anyone else planning on watching it?

Judith's still on Eggheads as is Pat Barker who, I think, was the 2nd person to win a million.
Amazingly, she comes across as one of the weaker ones on Eggheads, which just shows what an incredibly strong quiz team they are.

I didn't know about the writer donating his fee to a Coronavirus relief fund; what a wonderful thing to do.

The one playing Diana I keep thinking of as Fleabag's sister! Similar characters too.

I remember there was a bit of a backlash against Judith as it was a Royal question that helped her to win ! I think it was just coincidence myself. Chris Tarrant said the questions are random.

Yeah I think it was a coincidence. Just because someone's vaguely connected to the royal family doesn't mean they spend all day talking about Eleanor of Aquitaine. Some people moan about anything. Probably didn't like that she was a bit posh either. She still had to get all the bloody questions right.

I got first computer in 1999, I don't think Google was particularly big then, people used other search engines and the whole process was quite slow. People also used CD roms - an encyclopedia on a disc.

the late 90 or early 2000s, 64 grand could buy you a house! Even 32 grand would have got you a decent deposit of almost 50%
I bought a house at that time for £30,000. It depends where you live.

Judith Keppel got a bit of backlash because she was perceived as having an unfair run of high brow questions which played to her strengths. One of the tabloids got her in and asked her another set of less highbrow questions and she blasted straight through them as well of course.

They glossed over the fact that there had been previous million pound winners - if you didn’t know then you could easily get the impression that Ingram was the first.

But the problem is that the story has gone big on the fact that there was a shadowy network of people engaged in dubious or obsessive practices and that that led to a preponderance of middle aged middle class white people dominating the show. If you then show lovely clever Judith, who is the whitest most UMC most middle aged woman imaginable, winning then the show would need to waste time tying itself in knots to make it clear that nobody is accusing her of anything at all.

I thought Judith was great myself , but conspiracy theories will always abound with anything like this.

Alta vista was the top search engine in 1999 I think? Google started to take over early 2000's.

Weird coincidences happen sometimes.

Ingram’s second question was related to Brexit (Eurosceptics). His first question on the second day had Rupert Murdoch as one of the wrong answers.

The writer’s two biggest hits have been the film “Brexit: Uncivil War” and the stageplay “Ink” (a bio about Rupert Murdoch).

The ‘syndicate’ of people could only actually help with the 2 things though- getting onto the show and the phone a friend question, unless other forms of cheating had gone on before?

This programme has reminded me of when Derren Brown did one of his shows about being a ‘quiz master’, can’t remember what his methods were though.

So how many people did genuinely win WWTBAM? I remember Judith Kepple winning, was that about 99/2000? Definitely before Ingram gate.
Also I think that the programme is obviously designed so that very few people ever win.
It’s either very intelligent people who know most things or people that are just very good at quizzes, such as The Chase type people.
Most people that won were aged between 45-60. Intelligent people but who would probably stumble on questions to do with current music. So they may well know the answer to a Shakespeare play but wouldn’t know a Justin Bieber song question. That’s how the show eventually got people, they didn’t want to many to win but just enough to keep the show alive.
Oh and Mark from The Chase went on in about 2006 and didn’t do all that well in comparison to other contestants.

The questions are so random it's hard to know everything! My dh is good at science and geography and I'm more music / arts books etc. It's easier at home too ; must be so difficult under the lights with the tension of it all. I know I wouldn't do that well!

I like Jeremy Clarkson doing the show now. His not a mumsnet favourite person but he seems ok on there and not too condescending. Asking him is funny as he rarely has a clue either!

I think mark won £32k

Because they don't actually know definitively, as all three of the accused have continued to deny doing anything wrong.

But they were found guilty.

That still doesn't mean we know definitely what happened, which was what the post I was replying to was complaining about.

It’s either very intelligent people who know most things or people that are just very good at quizzes, such as The Chase type people

Yes. If you watch Eggheads it's illuminating to hear how they reason their way to answers they don't actually know. They have a technique whereby they apply any knowledge they have about the subject, however shadowy, to work out the most likely answer. Of course, that only works well on non time-limited quizzes and there's no doubt you need excellent general knowledge of both high-brow and low-brow culture to be a dead cert in most quizzes.

If Major Ingram had had any sense he would at least have pretended to be applying some reasoning to the questions, even if he was inventing it.

I think some of the other reasons many people don't win a million are

• the answers are multiple choice. That can make it difficult as it can make the contestant doubt the answer that they think they know. A bit like having several people in a quiz team who are all adamant they know the right answer.

• the stakes are high. You have to be really really sure of your answer to risk losing hundreds of thousands of pounds that you've already won. It's easier to walk away with a large sum of money than risk losing most of it.

Another thing is that the 'fastest finger first' tests a completely different skill from the main quiz, so people who'd be good at the main quiz don't always get a chance.

I didn't understand the bit when the brother was on the show and phoned the dad for his phone a friend. Dad got the answer wrong (I knew it btw, smirk) but was initially reluctant to choose which was right out of only two possible answers, but incredibly the Diana character who was standing right next to him didn't mouth the right answer to him. I mean, you would wouldn't you !

Some of Ingram gate is on YouTube. It’s been mentioned quite a bit about the Craig David question. Ingram initially stated a different answer then randomly changed it to Craig David, although he admitted he’d never heard of him. It doesn’t seem that any coughed at that point so he must have been very lucky or did cheat somehow.
Chris Tarrant stated in court that he couldn’t hear someone coughing, bearing in mind,” that he was only about 6 foot away from Ingram. Yet Tarrant has stated that he believes that Ingram was guilty.

but incredibly the Diana character who was standing right next to him didn't mouth the right answer to him. I mean, you would wouldn't you !

I would!

But, iirc, they weren't watching WWTBAM, they were playing Trivial Pursuit (of course) and she just heard her father answer the telephone and say something like "I'm not sure... May?".
After hanging up he asked her when Labour Day is in the US and she then said it was September.

I suppose CT wouldn’t have noticed the coughing because he wasn’t listening FOR it, unlike Ingram.

I guess that Chris was just concentrating on the person and how good he was doing : not what the audience was doing etc.
It must be quite intense under the lights. People do cough when it's really quiet ; I watch snooker and they moan about people coughing. That won't be on this year either :(

CT probably had an earpiece in too.

Did anyone see CT on GMB the other morning? He just said he had no idea about the coughing at the time, but the first time he suspected something was wrong was when after winning the £1m, the couple went to their dressing room and had a MASSIVE full on shouty argument. Strange way to behave when you’ve just won the jackpot.

CT interview: