Tag: Guardian

A Major Cough-up

ITV’s ‘Quiz’ has definitely left the public questioning the conviction of the ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ £1 million cheat Major Charles Ingram in 2003, but what the programme did not reveal is actually more fascinating

“After all that, can we be sure the Ingrams were guilty?” asked The Telegraph’s Chris Bennion in his review of the final episode of the three-part hit, Quiz, and indeed the ending has achieved the inevitable and will likely reignite interest in a story that dates back to 2001.

For the few that may not remember what occurred, a Major Charles Ingram won the maximum prize of £1 million on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on the 10^th September 2001, the day before the 9/11 attacks on America. Ingram’s wife and her brother, Adrian Pollock, had previously each won £32,000.

Immediately after the jackpot was scooped, the programme’s production company, Celador, suspecting Ingram had cheated suspended payment of the winnings. The police were called in and ultimately, after a four week trial in March and April 2003 at Southwark Crown Court, the Ingrams and another contestant, a lecturer and their alleged accomplice, Tecwen Whittock, were convicted of “procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception.” All three were given prison sentences suspended for two years, fined £15,000 each and ordered to pay £10,000 towards prosecution costs. These sums were later reduced on appeal.

Whilst many will know that Ingram was then forced to resign his commission as a major after 17 years and that he and his wife appeared on countless television shows including The Weakest Link, sadly Quiz did not delve into other bizarre twists in this “eccentric” pair’s life in the time since their “fifteen minutes of coughing fame/shame.”

Aside from being bankrupted four times in the intervening years (most recently in 2019), the former army officer chopped three of his toes off in a freak lawnmower accident in September 2010. Ironically, the “cheat” and then resident of Easterton, Wiltshire did the injury when he “slipped on a rotten apple.” Of the incident, Ingram recalled “lying on the grass” and thinking: “Oh dear… I certainly won’t be mowing any lawns again soon.”

Earlier, yet not long after his Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? conviction in November 2003, Ingram was convicted of an entirely unrelated insurance fraud. Found guilty of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception and of deception by trying to claim on that policy after an alleged burglary, the already disgraced son of a retired RAF wing commander added a two-year conditional discharge to his burgeoning rap sheet.

The Ingrams, now, but not revealed in the show either, are based in Maiden Bradley, Warminster and run a non-registered for UK VAT company that trades as ‘Diana Ingram.’ It sells Murano glass jewellery for prices ranging from £15 to £75 and of her wares, Mrs Ingram states: “Most products listed can be altered for shape, colour, length, etc., though prices may vary. I ship worldwide and nothing is too much trouble – I regularly offer personalised wrapping and buy and write birthday cards too!” No mention is made as to whether any kind of cheat sheets can be enclosed if requested sadly.

Charles Ingram, meanwhile, has kept himself busy on Twitter since September 2013 using the handle @gallantfive. He describes himself as: “English, Irish, European, Family, Labour, LUFC and proud remainer wanting a fairer world” and has over 7,100 followers. Whilst describing Quiz as “simply brilliant” and “terrifyingly accurate,” his family have plainly had a few visits from the media as a result of the show. Now represented by one Skye Redman at 89up, a firm that somewhat immodestly has self-appointed itself as “Europe’s biggest communications agency for great causes,” the ex-major this week tweeted:

“Media: Please #StayHomeSaveLives. In any event I assure you that doorstepping is wasting your time. My solicitor, Rhona Friedman, is available for comment via phone or video conferencing. For interviews please contact Skye Redman at 89up.”

After the conclusion of Quiz, Friedman told the Guardian: “I just know that they did not do it… I just feel very sorry for them.” She intends to file paperwork associated with the case in the summer “with hopes for a hearing at the end of the year,” and given the reaction of the public after the ending of this week’s dramatisation, one thing’s for sure: We’ve not seen the last of ‘The Coughing Major’ and his ever-so-earnest wife just yet.

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April 15, 2020
Moron of the Moment – Eamonn Holmes

Multi-millionaire 5G conspiracy theorist Eamonn Holmes deserves condemnation for inviting a scion to a billion pound fortune on to ‘This Morning’ to discuss COVID-19 instead of a war hero who has raised £4 million for the NHS

The nation is in the midst of dealing with a pandemic and most of us are sat at home in lockdown. ITV1’s This Morning’s Eamonn Holmes, however, yesterday yet again proved he just simply doesn’t get it. This Irishman illustrated it first in claiming the “mainstream media” (which he gets very handsomely rewarded financially to be part of) was hiding a link between 5G technology and coronavirus and now he’s shown himself up similarly by interviewing billionaires ahead of war heroes.

Quite rightly slammed by scientists as “irresponsible” and “ridiculous,” given his stupid words have resulted in attacks on communications masts by paranoid David Icke-types at a time when they are most needed by emergency services, the overpaid dimwit Holmes yet again excelled himself on Tuesday with a failed attempt at an apology. Then, to cap it all, he followed up with a most inappropriate choice of guests on the lowbrow show he co-presents with his wife, Ruth Langsford.

‘Sorry,’ it seemed was the hardest word for dear little Eamonn to say over ‘5G-gate.’ In fact, he didn’t actually say ‘sorry’ at all and, as the show opened, he casually ignored the fact that there had at that point already been 419 complaints to OFCOM about his recklessness. Instead, this buffoon lackadaisically attempted to suggest it was the viewers’ fault for “misinterpreting” his words and in what the Guardian journalist Marina Hyde wittily later termed a “quarter-arsed clarification” stated:

“Before we go onto the programme, I want to clarify some comments that some of you may have misinterpreted from me yesterday, around conspiracy theories and Coronavirus and this involved the roll out of 5G.”

“Both Alice Beer and myself agreed in a discussion on this very programme on fake news that it is not true that and there is no connection between the present national health emergency and 5G and to suggest otherwise would be wrong and indeed it could be possibly dangerous.”

“Every theory relating to such a connection has been proven to be false and we would like to emphasise that.”

“However, many people are rightly concerned and are looking for answers, and that’s simply what I was trying to impart yesterday but for the avoidance of any doubt I want to make it clear there’s no scientific evidence to substantiate any of those 5G theories.”

Whilst that the self-declared “best presenter in the country” Holmes – a moron whom previously reprehensibly “concluded an interview with a rape victim with the words: ‘I hope you take taxis now’” – was then quite correctly declared a “prick” by Count Binface (formerly Lord Buckethead) on Twitter was not surprising, but that he then chose the daughter of a billionaire as a guest for a segment termed: “Life in Lockdown” represented yet another own goal in the midst of a pandemic that is killing thousands.

On a day when it was revealed that a 99-year-old who had recently had a hip replacement, Captain Tom Moore, had raised a staggering sum for the NHS by doing ten laps of his garden per day, the daytime-show should have done an interview with this hero about his life in lockdown. Instead, the This Morning team opted to allow banshee-like, pyjama-clad Tamara Ecclestone – the irrelevant to ordinary folk scion of a family worth some £4 billion – to sit blabbering on whilst Eamonn Holmes bizarrely and most distastefully referenced her father, a dwarf-like man who once appallingly referenced Hitler as someone who “was able to get things done,” as a “stud muffin.” Anyone sane at this point turned off in utter amazement at this bizarre example of crassness.

Viewers, as was subsequently reported in the Mirror, reacted irately in “slamming” Miss Ecclestone – who claimed to have raised some £666,000 for the NHS via her husband’s art gallery business compared to Captain Moore’s singlehanded and rather more impressive £4 million sum in spite of his years and lack of a PR machine – but they should have gone further and actually condemned Eamonn Holmes for not having invited the former army officer on instead of this self-absorbed harpy.

The public might, just might, then have eased off the pressure on this most moronic man with a brain plainly fried by wireless technology waves. It is now time for Eamonn Holmes to be put out to pasture; but whoever is put in charge must make sure this foolish prat is never located anywhere near a 5G mast.

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Lord Buckethead reflected the views of many with his analysis of Eamonn Holmes as a “prick.”

Another Twitter user condemned Holmes for choosing Tamara Ecclestone as a guest.

Mirror readers were equally irate.

Meanwhile, back on Twitter another remarked on the “#COVID19 coping tactics of the rich and shameless.”

One Matt Owen pointed out how Holmes has been “wedged-up” by the “mainstream media” for “fuck knows how many years.”

A John Sweeney pointed out that Marina Hyde had bitten “the head off the moron Eamonn Holmes” and added: “He deserves it.”

Holmes was even referenced as being “like a drunk uncle” who “insults all your neighbours and then falls asleep mid vol-au-vent.”

Someone named Stuart Heritage mockingly urged Holmes to: “Fight the power.”

April 15, 2020
Save The Free Press

As #SaveTheSunNewspaper trends on Twitter, an analysis of the sorry state of the British press should act as a wake-up call to our nation suggests Matthew Steeples

Yesterday, ‘Save The Sun Newspaper’ was all over Twitter. Those clicking the hashtag were not taken to a page bemoaning the fact that the Rupert Murdoch owned paper has lost £68 million in the last year alone, but to a Go Fund Me campaign that has raised over £16,500 that will be donated to the Essex Coronavirus Action Urgent Food Bank Appeal.

Set up by an Essex based food bank campaigner named Simon Harris, #SaveTheSunNewspaper garnered support because of the intense dislike for a newspaper that some claim is “not fit to wipe their arse with” whilst others (especially the people of Liverpool, a city where it is mostly banned due to their crass reporting of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster) condemn it for its “lies” and “bigoted” reporting.

Whilst the ‘fake’ hashtag was about helping foodbanks, on Sunday night, the Guardian’s Roy Greenslade highlighted a genuine problem for the British press. In an article titled: “Why our newspapers might not survive the contagion of coronavirus,” the media commentator observed: “It is the bleakest of ironies: the biggest news story in a lifetime is killing off the very industry that exists to report it. Coronavirus is destroying newsprint newspapers across Britain, delivering the coup de grace to businesses that were already in the process of dying.”

Whilst it has been for long known that traditional media has struggled to cope and find a way to exist and maintain revenue streams in a period where online and social media have battered it, coronavirus, it appears, will be the death knell for many a print newspaper.

Just like, for example, the restaurant sector, which will likely see many establishments fail to reopen once this pandemic is over due to them not having the resources to get their staff back and pay their rent and suppliers, many print newspapers – most especially local titles – will not weather the storm. As Greenslade points out, “it seems inconceivable that publishers, already struggling to fund journalism, will return to the previous status quo.” Going further, he remarks: “That’s because the status quo was, itself, one of perpetual fragility in which publishers were engaged in the delicate task of managing newsprint decline while, in parallel, seeking to create a digital journalism business model.”

Here comes an epoch of change and with newsrooms across Britain currently completely empty, publishers will indeed start to rationalise when so-called “normality” returns (in whatever form that takes). Expensive city centre offices will be shut and like cancer, profitless titles will most likely be permanently closed down. This will not be a loss that should be glorified and it will not be something that should celebrated; without good journalism, we’ll all be the poorer. Those thinking we can rely on the Twitterati for news are in for an era of the emperor’s new clothes and they’re in for a future where fake news will quite wrongly reign.

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April 13, 2020
The Blatancy of Branson

As Sir Richard Branson demands a combined £1.2 billion in bailouts from the Australian and British governments during the coronavirus pandemic, we call for him to be stripped of his knighthood

Sir Richard Branson can’t have it both ways: He’s either British or he’s a tax exile based in the British Virgin Islands. But, no, in the typically brazen style of this baloney filled billionaire, ‘Dickhead’ has to have it all. And then, just to top it off, he has to have a bit more… And then to cap it, a little bit more, just to be absolutely sure.

Like the fat cat that got the cream, the fat cat always comes back wanting extra. Now, with news that not only is the job killing, non-payer of any personal income tax for 14 years in the UK is demanding not only £500 million ($625 million, €572 million or درهم2.3 billion) as a bailout from the British government to “help” Virgin Atlantic, but also £700 million ($875 million, €800 million or درهم3.2 billion) from the Australian government to bailout Virgin Australia as well, this greedy pig has finally taken the biscuit.

BVI resident Branson’s record isn’t exactly something worth celebrating. Whilst the 312^th richest person in the world, the anything but patriotic Branson – whom the Guardian rightly mocked this morning for “often draping himself in the Union flag” – has deservedly come under attack from both the left and right in Westminster. Angela Rayner of the Labour Party tweeted: “Richard flog your private island and pay your staff, we are in unprecedented times here. Now is the time your staff need support after making mountains of cash for the company” whilst Conservative MP Richard Fuller added: “Pay your employees yourself their unpaid leave. When it comes to looking at the protection of your workers, the time is now, and we will all judge you by your actions.”

Whilst we reported on how the motormouth Katie Hopkins had a pop at the Branson last week, this fantasist “wedding wrecker” and convicted tax evader must accept that where there are payouts there are also responsibilities. In September 2019, the cretinous self-appointed “entrepreneur” received £178 million ($219 million, €200 million or درهم804 million) when he cashed in on his pilot killing Virgin Galactic floating on the New York Stock Exchange; perhaps, now, he could use some of this cash to prop up his own failing enterprises. The likelihood of that? Well, we’ll have to spot Shergar the racehorse speeding by carrying Elvis Presley first. Now, instead, is the time that Britain took something back from Branson: Strip this pathetic parasite of his precious knighthood.

Pictured top: “Second rate creep” Sir ‘Dickhead’ Branson likes to get hold of whatever he can; here he is ‘Now Boarding’ whilst greedily grabbing a bikini-clad bird.

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April 13, 2020
Positivity From Pleurat

Refugee turned “one-man vodka band” Pleurat Shabani shares a message of positivity (and a reminder that we’ll all be having a martini or three together again soon)

Having escaped the civil war in Croatia, Kosovo born Pleurat Shabani headed to London in 1994. He, unlike Dick Whittington, did not find streets paved with gold but ended up working as a lavatory cleaner and kitchen porter.

Later, forced onto the streets after losing his job at Soho House, Shabani “hit rock bottom” but did not give up. He found a job as a glass washer at Oliver Peyton’s Atlantic Bar & Grill – which ironically was later ‘sunk’ by Marco Pierre White’s Titanic restaurant – and after being promoted to a role as a bartender, began a journey that ultimately resulted in the creation of his own vodka, Konik’s Tail.

Shabini, without the big money backing most spirits brands garnered in the early-to-mid 2000s, is a surprising success story. We reported on it back in 2014 and in spite of his shoestring budget – and the fact he literally had to glue his own footwear together (he considers them “ part of his journey”) – Konik’s Tail is now stocked in everywhere from Dukes Hotel to Waitrose.

Now, at this time of lockdown, the notoriously shy luddite Shabani has taken to social media and on Instagram, a place he’s only posted once before, shared a message of positivity that we should all heed. It follows in full below:

“First of all, I hope this finds you well in these increasingly challenging times of disruption and enormous changes to the daily lives of all of us. Together, we have learnt that passion, optimism and community will help us all come out stronger.”

“The pride of who we are as a community is not part of our past, it defines our present and our future. You have inspired me. Your presence has inspired me. Your friendship has inspired me. And, your stories have inspired me.”

“Together we will succeed and that success will belong to everyone of us. Better days will return. Stools behind the bar might be empty, no late nights, no last calls, but this – you are not forgotten. Our hearts are full of love until we are reunited again. I know we will be with our friends again, with our families again and I know we will share a Konik’s Tail martini again.”

“Spread the love and positive energy, help a friend, even a stranger. Until we meet again, be well, be safe and love each other. My warmest wishes to you all and thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Konik’s Tail Vodka is available from Waitrose for £38 for a 70cl bottle. Thankfully they can still deliver it – so have your chilled martini glasses at the ready.

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April 8, 2020
Sheen Shines

The ‘Guardian’s’ Rebecca Nicholson’s fascinating interview with the actor Michael Sheen is exactly the kind of reading needed during coronavirus lockdown; he reveals previously unknown details about bizarre encounters with Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng Murdoch

It’s hard to find stories to read right now in newspapers that don’t relate to coronavirus and it’s even harder to find compelling interviews that don’t feature bleeding hearts banging on about what good they’re doing (when they’re just actually craving a return to their glory days gaining acres of Alexa Chung-type press acreage).

Gone are the days of the great, the good and the not-so-good actually revealing something we didn’t already know and instead, it seems, COVID-19 has reduced The Telegraph, for example, to unimaginatively asking the chef Jason Atherton: “Powder or piste?” (His 50/50 chance answer: The latter – for those of you actually interested in this kind of inane drivel).

Today, however, the Guardian’s Rebecca Nicholson pulled a blinder with what one reader described as a “marvellous portrait” of the actor best known for repeatedly playing Tony Blair, Michael Sheen. Though ‘Two Tony’s’ – according to an individual who left a comment online afterwards – “sounds thoroughly uncomfortable,” Nicholson coaxed her subject into revealing amongst other things that Wendi Deng Murdoch once asked him to “dress like [Blair]” and “make [his] hair look like him” so she could “bring [him] out and surprise [Blair].” Please don’t throw up whilst considering that rather scary image. Thankfully there’s no mention as to whether Sheen enquired about the alleged extra-marital relations that went on between the ‘real’ Tony and the now ex-Mrs Murdoch, as there would be a detail that’d certainly be nearly as off-putting as what allegedly went on between the wife of one of the most loathed premier’s in history and Carole Caplin (what on earth became of her?) in a shower in Downing Street.

Sheen, a man “fascinated by Blair’s legacy,” but someone who didn’t meet the “wary of [him]” ex-PM until after he’d already played him twice, also shares snippets of an encounter with Rupert Murdoch. Of it, the ex of Kate Beckinsale recalls: “There was a very peculiar moment with Murdoch. I remember standing looking out at the view, and then I realised that Murdoch was standing next to me. It was quite a hot day. I just remember seeing a little bead of black dye, running down his face. I thought, oh, Ozymandias [two sonnets by Percy Shelley about the decline of rulers with their pretensions to greatness].”

Moving on to how he is “astonished” by our current Prime Minister, Sheen observes: “It’s very hard to trust someone who can go so easily in different ways.” Nicholson then concludes the interview with a suggestion: “Part of me hopes [Michael Sheen] might one day take the idea of Michael Sheen MP seriously, after all.” Superb.

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April 6, 2020
Simplifying Sunday Lunch (in Chelsea)

Chelsea favourite No. Fifty Cheyne is now offering its Sunday lunch menu “in the comfort of your own home… with only very little further cooking needed”

For those stranded in Chelsea and its environs during the coronavirus lockdown looking to want to have a bit of time off from their kitchen this Sunday, Iain Smith, the head chef at No. Fifty Cheyne, “has prepared a special menu… with only very little further cooking needed” that can be delivered direct to your home.

Available to order via Uber Eats at just £25 per head, you could be having roast chicken with glazed vegetables, Yorkshire puddings and gravy without all the fuss. Orders can be placed from 10am to 2pm.

For those looking for fine restaurant food at home during the week, No. Fifty Cheyne – which was described in 2019 as “a good laugh and definitely romantic” by Grace Dent in the Guardian and having a “remarkable feel of settled ease” by the Evening Standard’s David Sexton – has the answer also. They are now offering a daily menu that includes a fillet of beef with salt-baked beetroot and truffled creamed potato (£29.50) and pan-fried pollock with potato and leek, cockle velouté and milk crumble (£26) from Monday to Friday.

Hampers (from £59.50) and wine (from £32 to £215 per bottle) can be supplied by the restaurant and in addition, shortly, home essentials including lavatory roll and rubber gloves will be available as well.

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April 4, 2020
Preserved by Marmalade

Nonagenarian from Stockport beats coronavirus by eating marmalade sandwiches; she’s previously survived a bomb and likes biscuits also

Like Guardian readers, we at The Steeple Times love marmalade and we especially enjoy marmalade with lots of whisky in it. We’ve reported on the correspondence sent to the letter’s column of the previously mentioned King’s Cross based publication on the subject of the link between marmalade and longevity and now, today, it can be revealed that the eldest person to recover from coronavirus is proof of the pudding.

Against all odds, 99-year old Rita Reynolds from Bramhall, Stockport – whom fell ill with COVID-19 on 25^th March – has beaten the virus and made a full recovery.

Of this good news, the nonagenarian’s grandson, Henry Phillips, told the Guardian’s Jessica Murray: “I don’t know how she got through it. I don’t think she has ever eaten a vegetable or fruit. She lives on marmalade sandwiches and biscuits. But she’s never smoked or really drank.”

Mrs Reynolds is plainly like a cat with nine lives. In the Second World War, aged 21, she supposedly refused to go into an air raid shelter “because she wanted to read her book.” She instead hid under a table at her home in Liverpool and amazingly survived when a bomb landed right outside.

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April 4, 2020
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Sumption OBE, PC, FRHistS, FSA

Eton and Oxford educated former Supreme Court judge and historian Jonathan Sumption, as a barrister, successfully represented the billionaire Roman Abramovich against the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Formerly one of the highest paid legal eagles in Britain, this father of three termed his £1.6 million salary “puny” in 2001 in a letter to the Guardian and subsequently charged the extraordinary sum of £800,000 to successfully represent the UK government in what was then then the largest class actions against the state ever in 2005. The trial lasted just four weeks. Sumption speaks French and Italian fluently, owns a chateau in South West France and serves as a director of the English National Opera. He became an outspoken critic of the “hysteria” over the police reaction to coronavirus outbreak in the UK in March 2020. Of this “frightening opponent” with an “icy analytical instinct,” the Guardian’s Wendell Steavenson suggested: “Sumption is a man who cannot stop thinking” whilst the former Labour spinner Alastair Campbell more simply concluded: “Brain the size of a planet.”

March 31, 2020
Hero of the Hour – Joe Wicks

In giving “every single penny he makes” from his online P.E. lessons to the NHS during the coronavirus lockdown of schools, Joe Wicks has shown himself as a hero of the hour

On Sunday, the Guardian reported that the fitness coach Joe Wicks – a man who has shot to fame whilst teaching online P.E. sessions during the coronavirus lockdown of schools – will donate “every single penny” he makes to the NHS.

Posting on his Instagram page in the wake of becoming a “national hero,” ‘The Body Coach’ Wicks announced:

“So I’ve decided that as long as I’m the nation’s P.E, teacher, every single penny of the money generated on these videos is going to the place where we need it the most right now. All of it is going straight to the NHS, to support the real heroes right now.”

“Thank you for watching, joining in and sharing … I’m loving being your P.E. Teacher and now you can watch again, knowing you’re not only staying fit, you’re also helping raise money for the NHS.”

Surbiton born Wicks’ YouTube channel now has nearly 2 million subscribers whilst his Instagram has 3.3 million. Spear’s Wealth Management Survey estimates the 33-year-old’s worth at a staggering £14.5 million.

We join all those saluting Joe Wicks.

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March 29, 2020