Another day of filming for "Heads Up With Richard Herring". It's going pretty well though it's surprisingly tiring work listening to minor celebrities talking about the game of poker. Most of the guests were pretty good this week, including Anthony Holden who wrote
Big Deal which is one of the great poker books and as it turns out not entirely disimillar to the book I am going to be writing. My nemesis Grub Smith was also on which led to many rat jokes that baffled the few audience members who had turned up and Ed Giddins (
who came second in the celebrity poker thing I did earlier in the year). The people I had been slightly dreading interviewing were Major Charles and Diana Ingram - the couple who were accused of cheating their way to a million on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" by using a sophisticated system of coughs (ie getting a bloke to cough and shout "B, it's B" at the same time). I was interested to see what they'd have to say for themselves, but felt a bit sort of dirty having to interact with them. It seems weird to me when people can do something wrong and then forge a career as a celebrity off the back of that.
As it turned out it was quite a good interview. I started by trying to get the Major to admit to his crime, threatening him with a Chinese burn if he failed to do so. In spite of the evidence against him Charles vehemently defended himself, saying that Celador had concocted the evidence against him and that he had answered all the questions himself. In a way you have to admire him for sticking to his guns and it turns out he's turned down offers to do adverts and so on (he claims a newspaper offered him several hundred thousand pounds if he would admit it was a scam - though this seems an unlikely amount to get for such a story), but I wasn't massively convinced. I mean why would Celador fit him up in this way. It's good for them when someone wins and they would surely have been worried about the negative publicity that could have come about as a result of them withholding the cash. Charles was angry and kept on saying that the people who had done this would get what was coming to them in a slightly sinister way. I pressed him on what he meant, as it seemed to me that he might be thinking of using his military training to get back at them, but he merely claimed he was going to take them to court and get back what was rightfully his.
Diana was quite quiet through all this, and I have to say that although she is an unusual looking woman, I did find her quite sexy. I thought about asking her if she wanted to come and live with me instead of Charles, as unlike him I am not bankrupt or particularly disgraced, but didn't get round to it and to be honest was a bit scared of Charles by this time.
So what's the truth? Who knows? Well I think I do, but I might be wrong. Though I am not. I contined trying to get him to make the admission, but he stuck to his guns, instead plugging his novel, which he slightly creepily revealed had "three sex scenes and a rape" in it - he was a little bit to salacious about this and I exchanged a despairing look with Diana (if there had been a moment to make my offer of taking her away from all this, this was probably it - but I missed the window of opportunity, the story of my life). I don't know how great a selling point having a rape in your book, but this didn't seem to bother the scary Major.
I hope he doesn't read this. I will be added to his list.
