Quiz contestant strikes ‘gold’ as Spandau Ballet singer weighs in

A SINGAPOREAN underground railway worker found an unexpected ally in the singer of Eighties band Spandau Ballet after he lost a £5,760 cash prize in a phone-in radio quiz.

Muhammad Shalehan, 32, wrote to Tony Hadley, 59, in desperation after he lost out on the reward when the radio host on the Celebrity Name Drop competition on Singapore’s Gold 905 told him he had mispronounced Hadley’s name.

Mr Shalehan had prepared for weeks to play the quiz, in which the DJ plays a series of 14 one-second clips of celebrity voices to be identified by the caller. He was crushed to be told he had got 13 out of 14 right, only to hear a few weeks later that another player had won with exactly the same list of names.

Facebook users following the show also pointed out the discrepancy, but when Mr Shalehan followed up with the station, he was told: “We have reviewed the relevant audio clip of your call and our decision remains final ... The name ‘Tony Hadley’ had been mispronounced.”

Believing he had been judged on his accent, he decided the best judge of the decision had to be Hadley himself. “The prize money is 10k [in Singapore dollars],” he said.

“It might seems not much for a welloff person, but as a normal citizen it meant a lot to me,” he wrote in email leaked to the Hype & Stuff website.

“I have attached the Facebook post thread on which if you could be the judge on my pronunciation of your name it would be great because the judge [is] adamant on her decision.”

To his surprise, Hadley, who was on lockdown in his home in Buckinghamshire, got in touch with a video message from his living room.

“I’ve listened back to the tape and as far as I’m concerned, you pronounced my name absolutely correctly,” he said.

The radio station, owned by Mediacorp, a Singapore media empire, appeared to be unmoved by the singer’s verdict, but later told the BBC it had made Mr Shalehan an offer of a “goodwill gesture”, believed to be half of the original sum.

But Mr Shalehan said he was unsure whether to accept the offer.

“I don’t want myself to be, ‘Oh, he gets a bit of money, he shuts up.’ I don’t want that. I’m after the fairness, the justice of the game,” he said.