Teams of security guards are being used to “ensure fair play” on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
The ITV game show is back this Saturday night, airing from 9:10PM on ITV.
Hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, producers have revealed the extreme lengths they’re going to in a bid to avoid cheating.
In the age of smartphones and google, security guards are sent to the homes of contestants’ friends and family should they be called upon in the ‘Phone a Friend’ life line.
Producer Fiona Clark told Broadcast magazine: “With the advance of Google, smartphones and tablets, the management and security around lifeline ‘Phone-A-Friend’ needed to grow.
“A small team was put in place to oversee and deploy fully-briefed security officers to each person’s home to ensure fair play.”
Although security has been upped, the format of the quiz remains otherwise largely unchanged since its first series in the 90s.
Contestants have the opportunity to answer 15 questions to win £1,000,000. They can be helped along the way with four lifelines ‘Ask The Audience’, ‘Phone A Friend’, ’50:50’ and – first introduced last year – ‘Ask The Host’.
However as yet the new life line hasn’t proved a huge success.
Jeremy admitted: “Last year, as people will remember very well, I was almost entirely useless. To a certain extent, I’ve continued that tradition this time out. Occasionally I accidently knew something, but not as often as I would have liked.
“It’s so annoying, because sometimes, you’ll get to the £125,000 question and you go, I know this. But they’ve already asked you and used the lifeline on something like the Kardashians that you don’t know.”
And for anyone appearing on the show, the former Top Gear host went on to reveal his secret knowledge about British garden birds.
Jeremy explained: “It’s one of those little things that not a lot of people know, I know not very much but I know a little bit about birds. I know a Ptarmigan from an Osprey, a yellowhammer from a reed warbler.
“I know how to tell a cold tit from a blue tit, which most people don’t know. But now I’ve said that, people will ask me bird questions and I won’t know the answer. ”
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? airs at 9:10PM, Saturday night on ITV.
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