Like everyone else, we're absolutely obsessed with Quiz. The ITV drama, which concludes tonight, follows the real-life story of Charles and Diana Ingram, who used questionable means to win the jackpot on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The scandal swept the nation in 2001, and saw the couple found guilty of 'procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception.' But now their defence lawyer Rhona Friedman has come forward to claim that the couple were decidedly innocent.
Speaking on This Morning, she explained why she is backing an appeal, calling the verdict a 'miscarriage of justice..'
'The delay has been caused by changes in science, advances in science that weren’t available at the trial and it’s not unusual in complicated cases like this for appeals to take place some time after the original conviction' she explains. 'This is a long one, I have to say, but science can move in some areas quite slowly.'
Charles and Diana are aware of the drama, and visited the set during production. The original incident centred on a series of coughs which, it is claimed, helped Charles cheat by indicating the correct answers.
'Where we have got to now is the ability to properly discern the many coughs', Rhona explains. 'There was actually a lot of coughing, although Charles and Chris Tarrant didn’t hear it during the recording. There were about just under 200 coughs during the recording… Not all from Tecwen [Whittock, the cougher in question], from other people in the audience.'
Since the show debuted, many social media users have called for ITV to air the original episode, but an official representative has said that this won't be happening.
'What we think we have managed to get to, and it’s a work in progress, for the first time is identify where Tecwen is coughing', Rhona explains. 'Both coughs that the prosecution would say would be significant, and other completely innocent coughs, which properly contextualise how often this poor guy was coughing. He had, which I think was accepted at the trial, three different respiratory conditions. He was a habitual cougher.'
The programme resists deciding either way. Written by acclaimed playwright James Graham, and adapted from his play of the same name, the original work asked the audience to decide the verdict.
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