On British TV yesterday millions of viewers saw 58 year old Judith Kreppel become the first ever Jackpot winner on the original UK version of the popular world-wide quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

But DFTFC has in our vigilance noticed that which the programme makers assumed we would miss: The contestant was a plant made by the production company (allegedly).

Having just secured our legal position with the above bracketed word, and the question mark in the headline, we now present the following, facts as evidence of this claim:

• The programme is made by production company Celador, which is a dodgy name at the best of times anyway.

• The programme was originally devised by Steve Knight and Mike Whitehill, whose other credits include collaboration with Jasper Carrott on most (if not all) of his television output since at least 1990 ( Canned Carrott). All of the Carrott shows were Celador productions.

• Carrott’s previous show, Carrot’s Confidential (1987-89) included contributions from Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Ian Hislop and Neil Shand.

• According to ITV Teletext (a most reliable and factual source of information), ‘Millionaire winner Judith Kreppel is married to “television writer Neil Shand”.

• The episode of ‘Millionaire concerned was shown in direct competition to the final ever episode of the BBC’s flagship sitcom,

One foot in the grave.

Conclusions are not difficult to draw, even for Hoffin Bigman. Most competition rules state that employees of the organisers or their relatives are not eligible to enter. What we may have here is a scenario where a relative of a former employee of Celador wins the jackpot. At the very least, Mr Shand is an associate of former employees, but it may be more direct if he did indeed work for Celador. Still dodgy in the extreme…

Only one thing is key: that is for Ms Kreppel’s husband Neil Shand and the Carrott contributor Neil Shand to be one and the same (but we are going to make that wild assumption). Our sources do not tell us whether or not Mr Shand ever worked on the same show as the Knight/Whitehill partnership, nor if any of the productions Mr Shand worked on were Celador productions. However, even without these factors the evidence looks pretty damning and makes for good scandalous reading anyway.

The logical conclusion is that Ms Kreppel has been drafted ‘from the inside’ by Celador to boost interest in the show and upset the BBC’s final outing of Victor Meldrew.

I don't belieeeve it!

Of course this means that Ms Kreppel will not have won any money at all. Oh well, ho hum, she didn’t look like she needed any more anyway. Any further developments will be subsequently revealed…

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