&c1=usa&c2=(none)&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Media,Television+industry+(Media),BBC,UK+news&c5=&c6=Matt+Wells,+media+correspondent&c7=2000_11_21){kind=small}
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday November 21 2000 13.40 GMT
Victor Meldrew would not have believed it. After two years and just as its appeal appeared to be on the wane, ITV's Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? turned up its first £1m winner just in time to see off the demise of Britain's favourite curmudgeon on BBC1.
Judith Keppel, 58, who is distantly related to Camilla Parker Bowles, achieved what many had thought impossible by scooping the top prize with a remarkably wide-ranging grasp of history and geography combined with sound judgment and an element of good luck.
Ms Keppel, a garden designer from Fulham in west London, contemplated how to spend her new-found fortune at a secret location last night. And, as overnight ratings appeared certain to favour the hit quiz show over the last-ever episode of One Foot in the Grave, her success gave ITV chiefs almost as much reason to celebrate. After all, they have already given away £11,800,000 to get here.
Right to the last, the show's compulsively irritating host, Chris Tarrant, kept up the pressure on Ms Keppel and those members of the viewing public who had somehow missed the news of the big win. Seeing the £1m question: "Which king was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine?" Ms Keppel took the option that no other contestant on the British version of the show has done before - she decided to gamble £468,000 by answering.
An incorrect reply would have sent her winnings plunging to £32,000, and the show's producers intensified the atmosphere by cutting to a commercial break. It was three minutes before Tarrant revealed what he knew as soon as she had replied: that Henry II was the correct answer.
As the audience leapt to its feet in joy (understandable since their witness to the making of television history netted one or two a tidy sum in calls to tabloid newsdesks a few minutes later), Ms Keppel remained as cool as she had been since starting out on the journey to £1m. Her daughter Rosie ran down from the audience to hug her, while Tarrant voiced amazement at her calm. Ms Keppel replied: "I can't believe it, that's why." She then turned to her daughter and joked: "What do you want for Christmas?"
Ms Keppel yesterday attributed her success to a combination of luck at getting a batch of questions to which she knew the answers, a couple of lucky guesses and a friend who knew her Shakespeare. "I've always felt about this show that you can do it - anybody can do it."
Viewers first saw Ms Keppel on Saturday night, when she was the only prospective contestant who correctly placed four former prime ministers in date order. Her next hurdle came on the £16,000 question when she required the audience's help to name Mr Blair's country of birth. The location of Duffel, the town which gave its name to a variety of coat, proved more problematic. She used her 50-50 lifeline to whittle the possible answers down to Belgium and Holland. After a process of deduction and a gambling instinct, she hit on Belgium. "It sounded more French. So I chose Belgium. That was my real gamble."
It paid off, because she was stumped by a question about a stage direction from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Fortunately her friend of 10 years, Jilly Greenwood, who happened to be deputy controller of arts and features at LWT, shrieked: "I know the answer darling," and she scooped £125,000.
Tarrant said the strategy had saved her. "She was very clever at using her lifelines. She could have used her phone-a-friend on the duffel coat question but she said 'no, my friends wouldn't know this'." He denied BBC accusations questions were made easier as the ratings war intensified.
Ms Keppel, a twice-divorced sometime bereavement counsellor who was once married to comedy scriptwriter Neil Shand, has three grown-up children: Rosie, a 28-year-old artist, Alexander, a 32-year-old art dealer, and Sibylla, 34. But BT thought she had a "rampant teenager" in the house after she called the programme's premium-rate phone number more than 50 times to secure a place.
She confessed to having had "quite a nice time" drinking Coke in the studio bar after Sunday's recording. But she insisted her plummy voice and blue-blood lineage - she is granddaughter of the ninth Earl of Albermarle and great-granddaughter of Alice Keppel, mistress of the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII - betrayed a more modest background. "Money has not been a terrible problem and I'm obviously not on the breadline, but I'm really looking forward to spending it."
More Guardian Unlimited coverage
MediaGuardian.co.uk
Future of the BBC
TV listings
Useful links
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? website
BBC website
ITV website
