The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire question which 'exposed' Charles Ingram as a cheater

The Coughing Major is a moment of TV history that lives in our heads rent free and this clip of the infamous episode highlights the exact question he was exposed as a 'cheat':

Quick refresh in case you don't remember: Charles Ingram was the ex-army Major at the centre of the famous 2001 cheating scandal during an episode of the ITV's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

The then 56-year-old was stripped of his prize and, alongside his wife Diana and fellow contestant Tecwen Whittock, was found guilty of conspiring to cheat to win the £1m jackpot on the show.

By this point in the show, the production team's suspicions were swirling with a lot of coughing and spluttering coming from the audience and seemingly bizarre risk-taking on big-money answers - such as choosing answers he claims to have never heard of.

ITV

The very of-the-moment question that raised eyebrows was: "Who had a hit UK album with Born To Do It released in 2000?"

The answers to choose from were: Coldplay, Toploader, A1 or Craig David.

To which Ingram replies: "I'm not sure I'm afraid," before opting to use his 50/50 lifeline.

The one thing he keeps coming back to in his deliberations: "I've never heard of Craig David to be honest."

Tarrant jokes that his young daughters will be screaming the answer from their sofa before Ingram makes what looks like a final decision.

"I'm going to go for A1," he says emphatically.

"Final answer?" asks Tarrant, to which Ingram replies: "No."

Tarrant offers him the already-bagged amount of £16K if he's unsure, then Ingram surprises everyone by saying: "80 percent of the time I'm wrong when I guess, so I'll go Craig David."

This is despite admitting he had no idea who he was only moments earlier.

When building up to whether he's correct or not, Tarrant points out the bizarre train of thought, admitting 'he'd actually rather lost the plot of his thinking'.

YouTube/@Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Tarrant says: "Basically because he reckons most of his guesses are 80 percent wrong he changed his mind knowing he lose 15,000 pounds for giving the wrong answer and went for Craig David who he'd never heard of...

"You just won £32,000."

Viewers on social media said they could tell Ingram was acting strangely on this question, though obviously with the benefit of hindsight.

One wrote: "It looks so obvious that something was going on here. His body language just didn't look like someone genuinely waiting for the answer to be revealed. It was the £32,000 question. If it was me sat in that chair I'd be nervous as hell, not casually nodding my head at everything Chris Tarrant was saying."

Another said: "This is brilliant. This is blatant cheating. This makes me so mad that someone could cheat this easily."

A third commented: "Never heard of Craig David .. must be the right answer."

As the Major got closer and closer to the jackpot, the show's producers noticed Whittock coughing when Ingram selected the right answer and blowing his nose on the wrong one.

The Ingrams received 18-month suspended sentences and Whittock was given a 12-month suspended sentence.

Instead of winning £1 million, the Ingrams' cheating cost them a massive £115,000.