I completely agree with this, by the way. I don’t want to suggest that there has necessarily been a miscarriage of justice here – just that last night’s so-called “documentary” means very little.
Well put – just what I was trying to say.
pan
kabbes: it is good to have a devil’s advocate on board.
The conspiritors have now been tried and convicted in a criminal court. Presumably, every possible defense was offered at the time. As I understand the case, there was rather more to it than was actually presented in the TV programme; the programme concentrated on what happened during the recording together with retrospective views of those involved. The TV programme should not be seen as a trial, but rather as WWTBAM’s version of events.
We can only guess what the jury took so long about in their deliberations. My guess is that the degree of complicity of Mrs Ingrams would have been the most difficult question for the jury. We will never know.
yojimbo: AFAIK there is some sort of law in the UK that prevents a criminal from profiting from a crime: so no, they could not make money from it. I don’t have any details though.
I think he abandoned stopping at the £500,000 mark because he got greedy. It had worked this far, why not get hung for a sheep when you’ll get hung for a lamb anyway?
I think that was also the cause of the huge arguement the Major and his wife had in the dressing room afterwards.
Then I would have expected it to be presented in a programme subtitled: “Your chance to decide”.
… and this is my problem with the programme. They’re stringing out the pain for those involved and seeking to make a good deal of money out of it to boot (now it’s going to be a film?!) It’s being protrayed as a documentary and “the truth”… and yet it is actually only one carefully edited perspective. There is no way that I can come to a conclusion based on such a narrow perspective but I know that my natural caution emphasised by professional training when it comes to making decisions is not something shared by 99%+ of the population, who will immediately leap to all kinds of conclusions.
I work on many expert witness cases myself, which means I work closely with QCs. I assure you that you could read either opening argument and be utterly convinced. One side by itself means nothing. As one QC once said to me: if you can’t even sound convincing with your opening, you shouldn’t be there in the first place.
I repeat: a few possibly easily-led, excitable popular-television makers’ suspicions and paranoia means nothing. The jealousy of obsessive fellow-contestants who themselves have been on the fastest-finger segment of the show 4 times means nothing. But a good 75% of the show concentrated on this most circumstancial of evidence. Where was the meat? And why the debate trickery (such as the bait-and-switch)? And why was the argument so inconsistent? Where is the beyond-doubt proof?
Indeed we won’t. But of course the jury was made up of normal people like you and me. Maybe they simply were swayed by similarly clever editing. Or maybe there was other evidence that was more convincing and actually constituted rock-hard proof. If it was the latter then I’d like to see it.
pan
Twisty, we’re not talking about why he didn’t abandon the money. We’re talking about why he abandoned his strategy of reading out the answers and waiting for the cough. This abandonment makes no sense.
pan
You’ve made a lot of good points, kabbes, but while it’s easy to criticise the programme as a TV programme, and it’s right to be suspicious of the makers’ motives, the jury heard far more than ninety minutes of evidence and took three days to make their minds up. It wasn’t an open and shut case, but in the end they reached a decision.
The reason the judge gave for giving suspended sentences was that he thought that being deprived of both parents would hurt the Ingram children. No doubt that’s his honest opinion, but he may also have been influenced by the huge amount of publicity the case generated for Celador.
Nevertheless, if they were generally suspicious that past contestants had cheated and if they thought they could make their accusations stick this wouldn’t have been the first court case. The production team apparently wanted to pull the plug during the commercial break before revealing the £1m answer, but the Celador boss admitted they’d be crazy to do that purley on the basis of their suspicion. You’re right that suspicion isn’t satisfactory evidence in itself, but it seems the jury made up their minds on the balance of evidence presented to them, the declarations made by expert witnesses and the unconvincing testimony given by the defendants in court.
As Jon Ronson’s entertaining/tragic article in the Guardian reminds us (see jjimm’s link), the producers stand to gain far more than a million out of all this, and the Ingrams’ lives have been wrecked as a result, so it’s hard to see where your sympathy should lie. Probably neither side.
Another point is whether this whole thing ought to have been settled in a civil court instead of a criminal one. The whole sorry business has also cost you and me a fortune in tax!
Sadly I’m sure you’re right. Whittock in particular seems determined to milk it for every second of his 15 minutes. It remains to be seen whether they’ll make any money out of the planned film, and whether there are loopholes available by making it outside the UK. They all really need the money mind you; far more than either Celador or Martin Bashir do.
What I don’t understand is why the Major – given his protestation of innocence – hasn’t / doesn’t issue civil proceedings for the million he’s not been given as per his agreement (contract) with the teevee company – after all, he fulfilled his part of the bargain. They owe him £1 million, it would seem.
In addition, he (himself) has only to discharge the far easier civil burden of ‘on the balance of probability’ rather than the prosecution burden in a criminal case of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ in order to prove his case and collect the money; it’s not just the different standard of proof but on whom it rests that’s important.
Given the emphatic jury verdict of the criminal case that does now seem unlikely but he has had the period until now to issue civil proceedings and, in any event, he can always use ye olde legal manoeuvre - aka the emergence of ‘new’ evidence - in order to distance a possible civil hearing from the past criminal case.
In my humble post-legal opinion, the bloke is a prize wanker and, having heard his on the radio last night, absolutely epitomises the old type of arrogant, middle-order, not-as-clever-as-he-thinks, arse-licking Army officer – out of the same drawer as Half-wit Hewitt, IMHO.
Anyone know his Regiment ?
Just wondering - why were they convicted of fraud? Surely there’s not a law against cheating on a game show.
Panic? Excitement?
In the heat of the moment, people can do silly things. I think it was that neither Tecwin or the wife expected the major to go as far as he did. Tecwin tried to adapt to the major’s ramblings as much as possible. while the Major didn’t cycle through the answers slowly as he did on other questions, Tecwin (or Tarquin, or gobshite, or however you spell his name) did try to follow the pattern of cough at the mention of the correct answer. While it certainly was messy, It was still roughly the same pattern. Perhaps the Major was aware that doing the same thing for each of the questions would look suspicious and tried to vary his apporach?
Since the coughing could ( and did) arouse suspicion, I think it is entirely likely that they had a system which would allow Major Ingrams to answer questions without assistance when he could ( military questions, for example). On the Haussmann question, he thought he knew the question and tried to answer it alone. The coughed “no” was a desperate attempt to drag him back to the agreed system so that Whittock could give him the correct answer by the usual method.
So, basically, pressure can make someone abandon a working fraudulent strategy but it can’t make someone do a u-turn on what they think the right answer is? I’m not buying it.
I’ll remind you too that I also think he’s guilty. I’m just asserting that (a) it hasn’t been proven and (b) we’re all being manipulated by the TV-makers and should appreciate the fact.
pan
What’s always struck me is the sheer unimaginativness of the cheat. Surely they could have come up with a subtler scheme that wasn’t so blatantly obvious? Especially if they had to get the answers off other contestants before the cough. Did they honestly think no-one would spot what was going on?
The “abandoment” of their strategy makes perfect sense in this light. In his arrogance he honestly thought they were so much cleverer than everyone else and arrogance made him briefly consider going it alone.
As for Celador and Tarrant. I think his appearance and attitude as a witness made it clear. They were really not too bothered about the outcome of the trial or even ultimately the million pounds. You simply can’t buy the level of publicity that it has given the show.
Quite simply, yes.
I was pretty sure it’s the Trumptonshire Light Infantry, C.O. Capt. Flack. Most Google searches seem to chuck up his question about the Black Watch, but this article claims the Royal Engineers. Imagine their pride.
Perhaps not for a fitted kitchen or a holiday, but apparently for a million quid there is.
It’s mot like they tried to defraud Sale of the Century or Bullseye 
Yes, the police say that they view it as no different to any other million-pound fraud.
I buy that to some extent, but do think that there is a difference nonetheless. After all, the whole point of the show is to give that million away, which to my mind makes it rather different to the defrauding of a random company. YMMV.
pan
Could you imagine embezzling a Blankety-Blank chequebook and pen?
The shame!
MMV - inasmuch as the National Lottery also “gives away” prize money in exchange for fulfillment of certain criteria, but surely nobody would begrudge them for busting fraudsters. As do bookies, boxing purses, horse race prizes, Formula 1, etc. etc.
I do get your point about the program - it was worse than the Michael Jackson fiasco in its bias. However, there was clearly enough evidence, albeit circumstantial, to convince a jury.
MMV a bit about the fraud too. I’m not sure where I stand really. On one hand I definitely do see how it can be viewed a theft. He took what shouldn’t have been his. OTOH, it could so easily have been his, if you see what I mean.
Frankly I don’t care enough to really decide. Either way the whole issue is rather sad for all involved.
pan