Featured Image Credit: ITV
Topics: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, ITV, Celebrity, Jeremy Clarkson
Jess Battison
Topics: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, ITV, Celebrity, Jeremy Clarkson
Adding to his existing list of achievements, Sir Stephen Fry has managed to make Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? history.
And it’s all thanks to a special lifeline that was added to the ITV show when it was revived in 2018.
The actor appeared in last night’s (26 January) episode of the quiz show, for its celebrity edition, having appeared on it back in 2005 alongside Nigella Lawson.
That year, Fry won a whopping £125,000 for two charities.
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But this time round, he managed to bank even more in what host Jeremy Clarkson called the ‘biggest celebrity win since I started [on] this show’.
When the former QI host reached his £250,000 question, he was asked which European city out of Brussels, Strasbourg, Munich and Luxembourg City you would come closest to if you walked a straight line from Paris to Berlin.
And the 67-year-old decided to use the special ‘ask the host’ lifeline – time for Clarkson to step in.
“Jeremy is very encouraging, and he was great with the question that took me to a quarter of a million.
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“It was a geographical question, and you had to work it out. Jeremy has travelled so much, particularly in the area that the question was about,” Fry explained.
After a bit of a chat through the answers, the pair ‘kind of agreed that it was one of two answers’ so the star decided to ‘risk it’.
And fortunately, Fry got it right and banked what Clarkson said is a ‘whopping win’.
The Blackadder actor added: “This lifeline is a tremendous addition to the show. If Jeremy doesn’t know, he will say but he will take you through the thinking and it slows things down. Once you start getting to the high numbers, you don’t want to let the charity down.”
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Fry had the chance to win even more but his phone a friend lifeline was as stumped by the question as he was.
For £500,000, he opted to get help from Pointless star Richard Osman but he ‘naturally couldn’t’ work out the long question in the five seconds remaining.
He was given a list of cover versions of songs and asked which was released the furthest time after the original but the pair didn’t manage to come up with an answer.
But it turns out if Fry had gone with his guess, he would’ve got it right ‘which is almost worse than getting it wrong’.
He added: “You think ‘maybe I should have risked it’. But of course, you can’t risk it.”
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Either way, £250,000 is a huge, historical win for the show and Fry is going to donate the prize to mental health charity Mind which he has been the president of since 2011.
You can watch Fry’s episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ITVX.