How Who Wants To Be A Millionaire stops contestants’ phone a friend from cheating

The thought of being the chosen mate to answer the ‘phone a friend’ call on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? is pretty daunting.

Sure, you might be a big dog down at the weekly pub quiz, but being put on the spot on national telly to help your pal bag a sh*t load of cash? Now that’s intense.

And as tempting as it might be to have a couple of books by your side and your laptop open to Google, the producers actually have tight measures in place to stop contestants from cheating.

Although one recent millionaire hopeful didn’t need to worry about that as he stunned Jeremy Clarkson with his phone a friend.

Watch the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? moment here:

Adrian was stumped when it came to an environmental question to up his winnings, so chose to use the lifeline as Clarkson joked it would be ‘David Attenborough’.

And while it wasn’t quite that legend, it was another face from TV.

The contestant’s mate Kevin is actually an Egghead.

“Oh, is he?”, the former Top Gear host clarified, “He’s an actual Egghead? Oh, that’s quite handy. Are you a quizzer? I’m guessing.”

Eggheads is, of course, the British quiz show where winning quizzers, titled the Eggheads, are pit against amateur quizzers.

ITV

Obviously, Kevin got the answer right and Adrian ended up bagging an impressive £125,000 before leaving the ITV show.

Viewers dubbed the moment a ‘cheat code’ as they called it a ‘small TV quiz world after all’.

And while we might not all have professional quizzers for friends, there’s still hardly a chance of actually being able to cheat.

Ahead of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? returning to our screens once again in 2018, the production confirmed to Broadcast the measures in place to make sure those trusty ‘phone a friend’ nominees were being truthful.

ITV

As the internet has obviously grown since the legendary quiz show first began in 1998, the show needed to grow the management and security around the lifeline.

So, a small team was put in place to ‘oversee and deploy’ a group of ‘fully-briefed security officers’ to each phone a friend nominee’s home to ensure they play fairly and aren’t scrambling around on their computer for the answer.

Obviously, this at-home security added a new ‘financial and logistical aspect’ to the show’s budget but I mean, no one likes a cheat, right?

Topics: TV and Film, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Jeremy Clarkson, ITV

Jess Battison

Jess is an Entertainment Journalist with a love of all things pop culture. Her main interests include keeping up with the Twitter girlies, waiting for a new series of The Traitors and losing her voice at a Beyoncé concert. She graduated with a first in Journalism from City, University of London in 2021 and has previously worked at MyLondon.

@jessbattison_