A Keswick mum said she was over the moon after winning a whopping £125,000 on popular TV quiz Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Diana Strong clasped her hands to her face as she correctly answered question 12 to land the six-figure sum on the hit ITV1 quiz show.
At home, she said her time on the popular television programme had been a lovely experience. but was reluctant to expand further on her fortune.
Watched by a UK-wide audience, many across Cumbria rooted for the medical representative to do well.
Appearing in episode eight of the latest series, Diana told the audience she was not an expert in any particular subject but enjoyed general knowledge and had previously taken part in pub quizzes with friends – one of whom came to her aid when it really mattered.
Her chance for a run at the top prize came after she came top in the fastest finger first round with a time of 7.06 seconds to win a place in front of host Jeremy Clarkson, who described Keswick as a beautiful part of the world.
In a confident performance, Diana breezed through the early rounds – speeding through soft questions about scones, hats, companies, cars and cookers before a potential banana skin about Greek mythology.
Choosing the correct answer of Atlas, the mum told Jeremy Clarkson: “Thanks to home learning in the last year we had a topic on Ancient Greece”.
Question 10 saw Diana grapple with a complex scientific question concerning subatomic particles and the Large Hadron Collider.
With £32,000 at stake on the answer, she chose to phone a friend called Steve who openly admitted on the line that he was sad to say he had no idea what the correct answer was.
To the rescue was her other phone-a-friend Ian, who reassured her that he was 90 per cent certain that the answer was superconducting magnets, which Diana said had been her initial gut instinct all along.
Host Jeremy Clarkson told her that she owed Ian a drink as it was indeed the correct answer. Diana hit the £125,000 mark after overcoming a tricky film teaser with a James Bond link.
Guessing the correct answer was the “wonderfully fabulours” Dame Judi Dench who played M in the 007 franchise a total of eight times, Diana declared: “I love her all the more!”
She bowed out on question 13 of 15 which sought the name of the company, founded in 1847, regarded as “the king of Jewellers and the jewellers of kings.”
It was just as well. Diana’s favoured answer was incorrect and the correct answer was Cartier.
But it will take more than £125,000 to start a Cartier collection – its 18k carat Reflection de Cartier bracelet featuring 200 diamonds – costs £250,000.
Yet in Keswick at least, the prize money would buy Diana and her family 4,000 weeks of unlimited travel on the Keswick Launch – equivalent to 76 years on Derwentwater – with change to spare for some slap-up meals at local restaurants.
