Next question: are you ready for the return of Chris Tarrant?
In this brave new world we find the strangest things have become the norm. Suddenly, we find ourselves agreeing with Piers Morgan. It has become perfectly acceptable to dress only from the waist up for Zoom meetings. And, most bizarrely of all, Charles Ingram – aka the “Coughing Major” – has become some sort of cultural icon.
I had forgotten he even existed until this week, when ITV screened Quiz, the excellent dramatisation of the scandal that gripped the nation back in the early Noughties, when Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? would regularly pull in trillions of viewers and Chris Tarrant was a huge star.
Ingram is played by the peerless Matthew Macfadyen, and his ruse to cheat ITV out of one million pounds is being discussed again over garden fences (and on social media), as if it happened only yesterday. I suppose this is not surprising, given we are living at a time when we can only dream of such trifling matters becoming headline news. But this shows us how important light entertainment is, especially as we stare down the barrel of a year potentially without favourite shows such as Strictly.
I never thought I’d write these words, but here goes: come back Chris Tarrant, all is forgiven!