Charlotte wins £32k – with a little help from ‘the beast’

SINGER Charlotte Church had a surprise up her sleeve when she called up a friend during an appearance on a celebrity version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

When she got stuck on a question, she called up a very clever friend Mark Labbett - who is better known as ‘the beast’ on ITV quiz show The Chase.

Charlotte, who admitted she had got really interested in quantum physics a couple of years ago, got off to a flying start, answering question after question with no problem at all and it seemed she was on to a winner.

However, she got stuck when Jeremy Clarkson asked her: “Which of these publications was discontinued in print form in 2019?”

The choices available to her were the Argos catalogue, The Independent, Yellow Pages or Beano, and she admitted not knowing the answer.

Using one of her lifelines, the opera star asked Jeremy if she could call on a man she simply named as “Mark” and when the presenter revealed he was ‘the beast’, there was a big cheer.

“That’s quite clever,” the host remarked, commending the contestant on using a worldrenowned quiz master as the person to call on.

“I do know him, he’s my friend. I know him from the Robin Hood pub,” Charlotte replied before Mark finally answered the call, but unfortunately he wasn’t of any help to the singer to begin with.

Charlotte’s parents ran the pub in Cardiff and Mark said he had known the family for a time.

After being told the questions and the choice of answers by the celebrity, The Chase star told her: “I don’t know. It could be Yellow Pages, but that’s a guess.”

Following Mark’s efforts to help, Charlotte had to use another lifeline as she asked Jeremy to remove two of the four options.

This left her with Yellow Pages and The Independent. Mark had told her during their phone call that The Independent had stopped printing in 2017, meaning the only option to go for was the former.

Charlotte answered a few more questions before hitting another roadblock, at which point she told Jeremy she was going to bow out. She walked away with a grand sum of £32,00 for her two chosen charities. She was raising money for The Awen Project, a charity she has set up to build creative schools in the UK, and the Welsh-based Safe Foundation, which provides support for under-privileged children.

The £64,000 question was ‘Where was the 1876 battle often known as Custer’s Last Stand?’

The choices were Little Bighorn, The Alamo, OK Corral or Gettysberg. She decided to go home with £32,000. After making the decision to not gamble, she said she would have gone for Little Bighorn which would have been the right answer.