A series of coughs was picked up by studio microphones as a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? contestant dishonestly answered his way to the top prize, a court heard today.

After Major Charles Ingram had been presented with the £1 million cheque by game show host Chris Tarrant, suspicious production staff decided the coughs had come from an alleged accomplice.

Further inquiries by police pointed to Tecwen Whittock who was sitting just 10ft away from the soldier as a possible culprit, London's Southwark Crown Court was told.

Nicholas Hilliard, prosecuting, claimed that it was only by "cheating his way" through the 15 questions he was asked that Ingram was able to win the fortune.

"To state the obvious, you are not allowed to get the prize money... if you are using a scheme which no one knows about to get help from someone else in answering questions.

"You may think it inevitable, human nature being what it is, that where £1 million is regularly on offer, someone somewhere will have thought how it might be possible to improve their chances in getting their hands on the money by cheating.

"That is exactly what the prosecution say happened in this case," said counsel.

Ingram, 39, and his nursery nurse wife Diana, 38, of High Street, Easterton, Wiltshire, and 53-year-old Whittock, who lives at Heol-y-Gors, Whitchurch, Cardiff, and is head of business studies at Pontypridd College, south Wales, each deny a single count of procuring a valuable security by deception.

It states that they "with a view to gain for yourselves or with intent to cause loss to another, dishonestly procured Christopher Tarrant to sign a cheque for £1 million by deception namely by falsely representing that Charles Ingram did not receive any assistance on September 10, 2001, when answering questions on the television show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?".

Mr Hilliard told the court that Ingram, who is attached to the Royal Engineers, first appeared on the show at Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, on the previous day.

On that occasion he won £4,000, before recording was halted and he became a "roll-over" contestant, with the opportunity to increase his fortune 24 hours later.

The barrister explained the studio was equipped with a string of microphones.

Ten of them were for the benefit of the "fastest finger" hopefuls, one of whom would be picked to occupy the hot seat.

Others serviced the contestant and Mr Tarrant.

"It goes without saying that in any large group of people you will probably hear a lot of coughs, splutters, throat clearing, or whatever," the barrister told the jury of six men and six women.

"If each person did it once only, that would be 200 coughs".

But after suspicions were raised that Ingram's win was not above board, the programme's sound supervisor, Kevin Duff, analysed the various coughs that had been recorded.

He noted 19 he later described as "coughs made on mike".

In his view, they came from one of the "fastest finger" microphones.

"Tests have shown because various signals have been looked at and they are stronger on one side or the other that they come from one of the fastest finger contestants who was on the left side," said Mr Hilliard.

"That narrows the field a bit. Mr Whittock was one of those. Mr Whittock admits that he had a cough at the time and a number of people in the audience noticed it.

"You can make your minds up as to whether Mr Ingram noticed these particular coughs."

The court heard that the Ingrams and Whittock had been in contact by phone on a regular basis for several months before Ingram's winning show.

But they ignored each other at the studio on September 10, the second day Ingram was in the chair, Mr Hilliard said.

He said: "There's no evidence that the Ingrams and Mr Whittock spoke to each other at the studio earlier in the day before recording started. Indeed, both men deny having met or spoken to each other."

From February 5 until September 10 hours before Ingram was due back in the hot seat there were numerous calls between the Ingrams and Whittock, Mr Hilliard said.

The case continues.