Who Wants To Be A Millionaire contestant explained why he used lifeline for final question he already knew answer to
Seeing someone win a game show is always a spectacle to watch, seeing as almost every contestant fails to walk away with the reward.
However, one man managed to walk away with the grand prize on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in the coolest way ever.
John Carpenter, an IRS tax agent, was a contestant on the US version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in November 1999, and managed to make it to the final round without using any of his lifelines.
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The three lifelines on the show are: 50:50, Phone-a-Friend and Ask the Audience.
Hosted at the time by the late Regis Philbin, he read out the last of the night: "Which of these U.S Presidents appeared on the television series 'Laugh-In?'"
The options were Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.
Carpenter looked confident as soon as the answers were read out, with a smirk plastered across his face.
Despite looking like he knew the answer, he then proceeded to call his father, with the audience left shocked that he had finally needed to use a lifeline.
However, this was not the case at all.
As soon as his Father picked up the phone, Carpenter said: "I don't really need your help, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to win the million dollars." His cool quip was met with a sea of applause and cheers from the crowd.
When reflecting on his win years later, he said: "I would have felt like a fraud if I used a lifeline for those things, but I said to myself that I was going to use a lifeline no matter what on the last question, because I didn't want to be thought of as that guy,"
"But when I saw the question, I thought, 'My father is going to know I know this.' So, I'm a bit of a smart a** and it came to me to just tell him I was going to win."
The result made him the first winner of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in any country or edition of the show.
Since winning, Carpenter got to appear on SNL, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and even got to reunite with Philbin on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.
In one of the most confident - some would say cocky - moves in game show history, Carpenter definitely came out victorious.
Topics: TV and Film, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Money
Joshua Nair