CHARLES INGRAM, the infamous Who Wants to be a Millionaire? contestant, and his wife, Diana, will achieve E-list celebrity nirvana tomorrow when they speak at the Cambridge Union.

They will be tracing the steps of such figures as Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Jawaharlal Nehru and the Dalai Lama. The couple, still under suspended jail sentences, have achieved a rare double in Britain’s elite debating chambers: they spoke at the Oxford Union a year ago.

The Ingrams have been pursuing the contemporary path of redemption via reality television. Their models are the former MP Neil Hamilton and his wife, Christine (Cosmetic Surgery Live), the footballer Stan Collymore (The Farm) and the athlete Dwain Chambers (Hell’s Kitchen).

Jaffar Khan, senior officer at the Cambridge Union, said: “The Ingrams have an interesting story to tell, one that anybody who watches Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, and many who don’t, will know. It’s a tale of daring and deception, something our members readily lap up.”

As members of Britain’s growing tribe of professional disgraces, the Ingrams earn £25,000 a year by parading themselves in the media.

“I have a master’s degree in corporate management and I know how the market works,” Mr Ingram told The Times. “It’s all about supply and demand. The public don’t just want Category-A celebrities. As well as the Elton Johns and David Beckhams, who deserve their status, the public want to be represented by people they can empathise with.”

Charles and Diana Ingram achieved notoriety when he won £1 million on the quiz show with the help of 19 strategic coughs from an accomplice in the audience.

All three were found guilty of deception. The Ingrams’ 18-month jail sentences were suspended to spare their three young daughters from seeing the couple imprisoned.

Mr Ingram, a major with the Royal Engineers, was ordered to resign his army commission but was allowed to keep his pension and a £30,000 gratuity for 17 years’ service.

Later he was found guilty of two more counts of deception over an insurance claim for a burglary at his home in Easterton, Wiltshire. He walked away with a conditional discharge.

Their notoriety came with impeccable timing. The media, hungry for new star faces, had made shame and humiliation the staples of entertainment.

“In the dictionary, there is no such word as infamous,” Mr Ingram said. “You are famous either for bad or good things. Even Napoleon was famous. Even Hitler was famous.”

Today the Ingrams have their own website. There are T-shirts bearing his picture. A premium-line telephone quiz game apes the Millionaire format, with 15 questions of increasing difficulty. Coughing can be heard from the audience and contestants must guess if the sounds are coded messages or honest splutters.

The prize is “a cheque for £1 million, signed by the major . . . but uncashable”.

The Ingrams have starred in Celebrity Wife Swap, The Games, Celebrity Poker Club and Fear Factor. They have been guests of Jonathan Ross, Richard & Judy, Steve Wright and James Whale. They have appeared in the magazines Heat, Radio Times and Dogs Today. They have joined the after-dinner speaking circuit and plan a documentary in which Mr Ingram submits himself to a lie detector.

Judge Samuel Wiggs, at Bournemouth Crown Court, spoke for the nation when he said of Mr Ingram: “He doesn’t exactly shun publicity, does he? One only has to switch on the television to see that.”

The couple’s motivation is financial survival, with Mr Ingram facing jail unless he can find £15,000 for his fine, plus £35,000 costs, which he cannot.

He said: “It frustrates me because a lot of people compare us to the Hamiltons, but we are in dire circumstances compared to them. They were never convicted of anything, they haven’t got children, they had reasonable means. I do believe fundamentally that we have suffered in their wake.”

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