A lecturer accused of helping a British Army major 'cheat' on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?has accepted up to 19 allegedly coded coughs came from him.
Mr Tecwen Whittock's admission came before one of the world's top sound experts told a jury he believed the same person was responsible for the apparent throat problem.
Dr John French said it was also clear the coughs came from a row of five Fastest Finger First contestants that included the lecturer.
He told London's Southwark Crown Court that unless the lone female among them was a "very extraordinary woman" that narrowed the field to four men.
Dr French said the measurement of energy levels which had helped him reach his conclusions had also allowed him to source a spoken "no" - recorded just as Charles Ingram seemed about to answer the £500,000 question incorrectly - to the same area of the studio.
Dr French told the court: "It was on mike, and perhaps spoken by the cougher."
Mr Whittock, 53, of Heol-y-Gors, Whitchurch, Cardiff, who is head of business studies at Pontypridd College, South Wales; Mr Ingram, 39 and his 38-year-old wife Diana, both of High Street, Easterton, Wiltshire, each deny a single charge of procuring a valuable security by deception on September 10th, 2001.
Prosecutors claim Mr Whittock used coded coughs to guide Mr Ingram to the correct answers as the Royal Engineers officer mused aloud over the four options on offer after each question.
The court the college lecturer told police he had been suffering from both hay fever and a dust allergy during the show, and that any correlation between his coughs and the major's answers were coincidence.
Dr French, who was giving evidence on the seventh day of the trial, said that while the forensic analysis of coughing was still "virgin territory" he believed the same person was responsible for the coughing.
PA