GAMESHOW cheat Charles Ingram was criticised by a trial judge after he pleaded poverty to try and get his court costs reduced.

The 41-year-old former Army major, from Easterton near Devizes, won the top prize on the TV quiz Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in September 2001, but a jury at Southwark Crown Court found that he and his wife Diana had conspired with college lecturer Tecwen Whittock to arrange a system of coughs to alert him to the correct answers.

He has since made various TV appearances and competed in The Games on Channel 4.

But his lawyers told Southwark Crown Court last Wednesday that Mr and Mrs Ingram were barely making ends meet.

Judge Geoffrey Rivlin, who presided over the trial last March, was asked to reduce the legal bills of the couple, who still owe £25,000.

"The affidavits before the court from Mr and Mrs Ingram paint a picture of a family in substantial debt and on a very low income," said Selva Ramasamy, defending Ingram.

The lawyer said the couple and their three children were living in rented accommodation and were not able to repay defence costs.

But Judge Rivlin demanded to know how the family had been able to spend £11,000 on a new car while repaying a loan of £6,000.

"This was against a background of knowing that substantial sums of money had already been ordered in respect of defence costs," the judge said.

He said he took a "jaded view" of Ingram's failed £122,130 civil suit against the show's production company, Celador International.

Ingram had tried to force the company to hand over the prize money they withheld.

The judge said: "This was a claim which the Court of Appeal described as "inherently fraudulent."

"This money could have been used to pay the cost orders that I made. Major Ingram might have thought it was a good tactic to import, so he could say to the jury he had a claim against Celador.

"He might have thought it was going to enhance himself in the eyes of his associates that he had a claim against Celador. If these proceedings were completely fraudulent, then why should I take them into account?

"I don't know much about his present lifestyle, except that he is living in the same house which I, and many other members of the public, have seen, and he has got a motor car."

Judge Rivlin rejected a request to publicly fund a forensic accountant to analyse the couple's finances but agreed a new report of their accounts should be compiled before reaching a decision.

"I believe it is right in the circumstances that I should ask the Legal Services Commission to prepare an up-to-date report," he said.

"I say that for this reason: that through no fault of their own, but because the appeals procedure has been lengthy and the original report is quite literally a year out of date."

But the judge angrily declined Mr Ramasamy's final request for legal aid to foot the bill for last week's proceedings.

Judge Rivlin said: "I think that these people should have no more public money to fund their representation in respect of these matters."

The hearing was adjourned until the compilation of the Legal Services Commission report.

In May, Mr Ingram failed in his appeal against sentence and was not granted leave to appeal against conviction. But his wife Diana was told she did not have to pay her £15,000 fine and £10,000 legal costs.

Since resigning from the Army in July last year, Mr Ingram has concentrated on staying fit and in April took part in the London Marathon as well as participating in the Channel 4 series The Games. He raised £16,500 for the deaf/blind charity Sense by competing in the London Marathon and hopes to raise a further £10,000 for the good cause by running the New York Marathon in November.

He is due to start serious training for the marathon on Sunday and he will be running almost daily through the lanes around Devizes "in a rather nasty Sense day-glo orange running vest."

He said: "Sense does some remarkable work by supporting children all over the country with deaf-blindness and associated disabilities. The challenge I face running a marathon is nothing compared to the challenges faced by deaf/blind children every day."

Donations can be made direct to Sense by using a credit or debit card at www.justgiving.com/cwingram.