Chris Tarrant has spoken about the drama which surrounded Major Charles Ingram's 2001 appearance on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? admitting, he had no idea what was happening.
The television icon who presented the ITV programme between 1998 and 2013 found himself completely dumbfounded when the former military man appeared to have cheated his way through the questions.
Major Ingram, 59, managed to wing his way through the competition, ultimately winning the £1million jackpot but all was not as it seemed.
The Shardlow, Derbyshire-born Major used all three lifelines before he managed to get to the final question but it later emerged he had used cheating tactics throughout.
Speaking about the scandal during an exclusive chat with The Mirror, Chris, 76, said: "I've always said I had no idea what was happening, genuinely.
"I'm sitting there, eyeball to eyeball with this guy and bearing in mind I've sort of been on telly all my life, it was probably one of the most amazing, forget about what happened afterwards.
"It was just one of the most amazing TV shows I've ever done because people were screaming, shouting booing, gasping, applauding, standing, coughing because everybody coughs in television.
"I didn't notice this bloke about two inches away, looking behind them for a cough and all that, bearing in mind, the guy was a serving British Army Major in great big close-ups.
"You would never expect that to happen, would you?"
Chris continued: "All we ever said to people in those days, we were pretty naive considering there's a million quid involved.
"We just said to people can you'll turn your phones off assuming that they would, well obviously one of them didn't and the question got out and somebody sent it back from a search engine, etc.
"I went up to the director's box afterwards, and sort of said, 'what a great show another million-pound winner', my mate, the director said 'I don't think so, I don't know I, think there's something wrong.'"
Chris explained that the boss went into a viewing room to review the footage and they noticed that it "didn't fit the pattern," before a "young editor" noticed that there had been a "cough" after one question.
"They phoned the fraud squad and they went through it and said there was a case," Chris said before adding: "The show was actually recorded on a Monday night, I gave him the cheque on a Monday night but the way he used to work, the show wasn't due to go out to the Saturday.
"I gave him a cheque on the Monday night with Saturday's date on Thursday, Paul Smith, who owned the company, rang him and stopped the cheque."
The veteran broadcaster went on to say they continued the show for two years with a court case looming over their heads and they were not allowed to discuss the scandal.
Chris recently teamed up with the National Lottery to promote the work done by those helping support the Ukrainian refugee crisis and recently unveiled a portrait of Ukrainian caseworker Vladyslava Zhmuro by artist Sergey Piskunov in Liverpool.
The star took in a family from Ukraine following the illegal Russian invasion and gushed over how they are excelling at life in their new British surroundings.
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