IT was not so much of a surprise that Charles Ingram cheated on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

The real surprise was that it was done so crassly.

Go to any pub or club quiz (apart from league quizzes, which are better regulated) and you'll see someone making covert mobile phone calls to get the answers.

It is accepted practice, even though it isn't in the spirit of honest competition. So, a system of coughing is about as low-tech as you can get.

You would have thought a major in the Royal Engineers would have had a bit more ingenuity, plus access to James Bond-type gadgets. Maybe he could have worn a secret transmitter about his person, linked to a confidant in Croydon on a super-computer.

Coughing, indeed. Even Morse Code would have been more sophisticated.