Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? viewers were left reeling as a single question on fantasy novels saw contestant Mark use up all of his lifelines - including asking Jeremy Clarkson.
Fiction author Mark Blacklock from York returned to the ITV quiz show on Saturday night to face host Jeremy Clarkson as he faced up to the eighth question in the road to winning £1million.
The question would be for Mark to win £8,000 and it would have appeared to have been an ideal question for the novelist and literature fan.
However, unluckily for Mark, it proved to be one literature question he just had to wager a guess on as he used up all of his lifelines on the one question.
The question was: “Which of these famous fictional locations from fantasy novels was created first?"
The options given were A) Hogwarts B) Discworld C) Hobbiton and D) Narnia.
Mark correctly identified the author’s of each, noting A-B’s authors as being JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis respectively.
However, as Mark noted, he had “professional anxiety” over the question and Jeremy noted if he was in a writing society they would “laugh at” Mark if he got it wrong.
After selecting the 50:50 lifeline, the potential answers were narrowed down to Hobbiton and Narnia - the two Mark was most torn between as Tolkien and Lewis were "contemporaries".
As Mark was still stuck, he chose to phone a friend, but they too were of little help.
As this failed, Mark used another lifeline by phoning another friend and they too could not help him.
Following this, Mark decided to use his final lifeline which was to ask Jeremy for his opinion.
The presenter admitted that in a rare occurrence he was actually in line with all the others that Mark had asked and he too was uncertain and would be guessing if he gave him an answer.
Resultantly, author Mark decided to guess and chose C) Hobbiton, prompting the answer to be correct and Mark won £8,000.
It was also revealed that Hobbiton was created in 1937 and Narnia in 1950, 13 years apart.
Viewers of the show took to social media to share their surprise at what happened.
One person penned: “Oh dear......none of the lifelines have helped. Poor Mark. #WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire ”.
A different fan commented: “Using all your lifelines on one question #whowantstobeamillionaire ”.
Meanwhile, another viewer commented: “We're burning through the lifelines... #whowantstobeamillionaire ”.
Finally, one person opined: “This fella writes fiction for a living and has wasted 4 lifelines on this”.
Thankfully and impressively, Mark ended up making it to £64,000 after this despite having no lifelines.
Well done, Mark! Clearly, he should have trusted his instincts!
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? airs on ITV on Saturdays at 8.30pm with previous episodes available on ITV Hub.
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