Jeremy Clarkson helped one Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? contestant win £32,000 – but another lost out on a huge prize after turning down the presenter’s help.
Contestants on the revived ITV gameshow have a new fourth lifeline alongside the classic ’50:50’, ‘Phone-a-Friend’ and ‘Ask The Audience’ options.
‘Ask The Host’ enables them to refer a question they’re stuck on to Jeremy.
While the new aid has had mixed results, much to The Grand Tour frontman’s chagrin, it did come in handy for player Sandra Howe in tonight’s episode.
For her £16,000 question, Sandra was asked: “12 miles 752 yards is almost exactly how many kilometers?”
Noting that it was “kind of road related”, she decided to enlist Jeremy’s help.
“I do know that five miles is eight kilometres,” he said.
“It’s nothing to do with driving by the way, this is pure maths. Guess what I got in my maths O-level? U!”
Working out the answer, he said: “10 miles is 16 kilometers, 2 is… 3 and a bit, so it’s 19 and a bit.
“It’s 20, I’m pretty certain.”
Satisfied with what she’d heard, Sandra correctly submitted 20 km as her final answer.
She eventually won a £32,000 prize, having failed to make it past her £64,000 round.
While Sandra took home a five-figure sum, her successor wasn’t so lucky after misjudging Jeremy’s capabilities.
Jon Stitcher went in to his £16,000 question without setting his ‘second safety net’, which gives contestants a fallback in case they miss out on big-money targets.
He was asked: “On the google.com homepage, the two letter Gs in the standard Google logo are usually what colour?”
“What a horrible, horrible question,” Jon reacted.
The poker enthusiast used his Phone-a-Friend to call pal Chris, who guessed green but said he wasn’t “particularly confident”.
Still not confident, Jon played his 50:50, which left him with blue and green as possible options.
“Well the one I thought is gone,” he pondered. “I thought it was red.”
Jon then opted not to use Ask The Host, instead “gambling” on green on his final answer.
“No offence, but I don’t think asking you at this point is gonna be particularly fruitful,” he told Jeremy. “I wanna save you for something harder.”
However, the correct answer was blue – meaning Jon left with only the first safety net prize of £1,000.
To add insult to injury, it turned out that Jeremy did know the correct answer.
“The maddest thing you’ve ever done. I knew it was blue, and I was right,” he remarked. “I spend half my working life on Google!”
Jeremy took over from Chris Tarrant as presenter of the iconic quiz format when it was revived for its 20th anniversary last year.
A brand new series of Millionaire airs every night this week on ITV.
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