Live Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? How it Began

Yesterday saw the conclusion of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The People Play live specials featuring members of the public. Two out of the three shows this week became the most watched show in the 9pm timeslot with many thousands of viewers playing along via the online game. As an added treat we have managed to dig through the Millionaire archives to give you the very first live show which was produced nearly ten years ago.

To celebrate their 300th show* they decided to produce a live show for the first time.  The basic format might have been the same with 10 contestants in Fastest Finger First and fifteen questions to win £1 million. However, they made some subtle changes to the format on that special night. When a contestant decides to Ask the Audience, they would ask the members of the viewing public to phone in with their chosen answer. As this was 2002, social networking didn’t exist and the internet was slightly fresh at the time. In addition, a contestant may trade one of their three lifelines to flip a question for a new question at the same question level. Although this was used on the live show, it was used later on for a couple of celebrity specials.

Due to the length of the video it is in two parts. Please excuse the quality as this was taken from VHS recording in 2002. Please don’t call the telephone numbers on screen as they probably don’t work anymore but if they do then you might be charged.

Videos courtesy of ITV, Celador Productions and Victory Television.

*The live show was actually the 299th show to be broadcast. This was because of the Charles Ingram fraud case as his appearance was removed from the schedule in 2001. His appearance on the show was finally shown after the court case conclusion in April 2003.