ITV/PA Charles Ingram on the show (left) and with his wife Diana (right)

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Charles Ingram, a former Army officer, gained notoriety after he won the jackpot on the popular television game show in 2001. But his victory was short-lived after he was accused of cheating and a court ruled that he had answered his questions correctly thanks to a participant coughing on cue to alert him to right answer - despite Ingram maintaining that luck, military training and strategy had helped him answer the winning question. And now, a new book claims to have found unseen evidence that casts doubt on Ingram's guilty conviction. Ingram was found guilty in the spring of 2003 along with his wife Diana and fellow gameshow devotee Tecwen Whittock, who were both in the studio, of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception. The Ingrams were sentenced to 18 months imprisonment suspended for two years, while Whittock received a 12-month suspended sentence. The new book, titled Bad Show: The Quiz, the Cough, the Millionaire Major, argues that there were over 192 coughs during the programme, some of which were inconsistent. The book also told how even Chris Tarrant, the show's presenter, was initially "flabbergasted" by the accusations, how a manager who was not present at the recording was called as a prosecution witness, and questioned why the programme's tape was not handed into police until nearly a year after the recording.

PA The book said that the gameshow ruined Ingram's life

Authors Bob Woffinden and James Plaskeff said there is no evidence to suggest that Ingram had ever been in touch with his supposed accomplice either before or after the show. Although they confess that Whittock and Diana were known to each other through their love of game shows, they state that Ingram being on the show at the same time as Whittock was complete "chance". "In all the millions of words that have been written about this case, this point has never been emphasised enough," they said in a joint MailOnline article. "Yes, Diana Ingram and Whittock were known to each other through their mutual passion for game shows, and had indeed been in contact on several occasions, including the night before the recording and at lunchtime on the day of it — calls lasting a total of eight minutes — although they had never met. "When Ingram discovered this, he said later he was furious 'to the point of divorce'.

How was Ingram supposed to identify which of the 192 coughs recorded during the programme he could trust? Bob Woffinden and James Plaskeff

"It was complete chance that the two were on the show on the same day, because Ingram was a 'rollover contestant' from the day before — that is to say, he was still playing when the show ended the day before, and so was allowed to keep playing in the next programme. "If the Crown's case was correct, however, the scam was hatched in its entirety in those three brief telephone conversations. Would three intelligent people have embarked on such a scam with so little time to prepare?" They also claim that as part of the defence's case, Whittock's respiratory function had been tested. According to Professor Alyn Morice, a respiratory expert from Hull University, he was found to be suffering from two conditions which cause chronic coughing. "This would explain why, during the programme, Whittock had coughed so much," the authors argued. "If the Ingrams had signed someone up to their supposed scam, why on earth would they have chosen somebody liable to cough not just on cue but off it?" As well as this, out of 192 coughs recorded during the show, only 19 were deemed "significant", the book claims. It is also believed that there was an 18-minute gap in the coughing during which point Ingram struggled to answer a question.

PA Ingram during the controversial show