A Who Wants To Be A Millionaire champion made one simple change following his jackpot.
Pat Gibson was the only finalist ever to reach the million-pound question on the ITV show with two of his lifelines left.
According to Mirror Online, the 59-year-old, from Wigan, landed the jackpot in April 2004 before devoting himself to quizzing and was crowned Mastermind champion a year later, before winning BBC Radio 4’s Brain of Britain, and landing a part on Eggheads, a year after that.
But unlike the other winners, dad-of-two Pat insists he didn’t go on the show for the huge cash prize.
In fact, the only change he made after winning was going part-time in his job to focus on quizzing. He went to one week on and one week off.
He said: “It’s a high profile programme and an exhilarating challenge to try to win it. It was only afterwards when it registered that I’d won the money too. Obviously there was satisfaction in that too, but it wasn’t the reason I did it.”
Pat, who spent weeks trying to enter the show, thought he’d missed out on a chance after two contestants came and went on his episode and then he got the answer wrong for the third ‘fastest finger’ round.
“But then Chris (Tarrant, the then-host of the show) said nobody had got it right, so we were back in play. They didn’t show that on TV, but by the time I was in the seat I was already feeling extremely tense.”
On his £1m question, Pat used his 50:50 and then his phone-a-friend before correctly guessing the Arlington Million was not one of the American Triple Crown horse races.
Whereas many millionaires might spend their money on foreign holidays or luxury purchases, Pat indulges in his love of quizzing, spending four to five hours a day honing his general knowledge skills.
