Andrew Fanko, a 44-year-old translator from Market Harborough, Leicestershire, missed out on the £1 million jackpot on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? but insists his £500,000 prize has still saved his family financially. He and his wife Frankie, who have a six-year-old daughter, both work as translators, but their freelance work has been severely impacted by artificial intelligence.
A Life-Changing Win
Andrew explained how the money will make a huge difference: "It's come at a really, really lovely time. First because our work has been kind of thrown under the bus a bit in the last few years because of AI. We are both translators and the freelance translation market has pretty much died to death in the last five to 10 years so although I'm lucky enough to have an in-house position at the moment, I don't know how long that's going to last, and Frankie's work has dried up quite a lot so this will really make a huge difference to us."
He added: "If either of us want to retrain or anything like that, it gives us the chance to be able to do that and I don't think early retirement is a possibility, but it certainly makes our lives a lot easier. We genuinely were getting pretty concerned about the work situation. It was getting pretty stressful. Knowing that it is gonna come in fairly soon has been absolutely massive for us. It's made a huge difference. We both feel a lot lighter, a lot more positive."
Nail-biting Game
Andrew sailed through the ITV show until hesitating on Question 12 for £125,000 about which cell type does not have a nucleus. He phoned his friend Jonathan, who was 60 percent sure it is bacteria, and after using his 50-50, went with this correct answer. He stumbled again on a question 14 for £500,000 about which character is killed in Murder on the Orient Express. He tried to get help from host Jeremy Clarkson but when that failed, correctly guessed Sam Ratchett.
His final question for £1 million was to name which one out of the four people named was an EGOT winner, meaning having scooped four different arts prizes including an Emmy and an Oscar. He didn't know the answer and asked the audience, but the majority thought it was Bette Midler. After taking the £500,000 and not answering, Andrew was told the correct answer was Andrew Lloyd Webber.
No Regrets
Reflecting on missing out on the big prize, Andrew said: "I'm fine with it. Honestly. The only way I wouldn't have been fine with just missing out is if I had known the answer to the million pound question and not gone for it, but I just didn't know it. So it is the best of all worlds really because I've been able to win a really life changing sum of money, genuinely life changing, and I know I couldn't have done any better. So yeah, I have no regrets at all."
He added: "The main pressure I felt was on the half a million pound question. So the Agatha Christie question, Frankie is a massive Agatha Christie fan. So I was like I could feel the eyes kind of burning into the back of my head. I knew that she would know it in a heartbeat. But I had to think about it, quite a lot before I was confident enough to go for it."
Quiz Enthusiast
Andrew and his wife are both big quiz fans. He has previously been on MasterMind, 15-1, Only Connect, and Brain of Britain. The couple also won on Eggheads with two friends, taking a £33,000 prize between them. His big win has not put him off having a go at other TV quizzes. He revealed: "I probably will do stuff in the future. Just because I absolutely love it. It might be harder to get on now, I guess, but you know… Mastermind. I got to the semi final four years ago and I still have ambitions to do well on Mastermind.. perhaps not immediately because I do want to take a little break from it, but yeah, I think Mastermind in the future is the one that I want another crack at."
Plans for the Prize
Now the episode has aired, his long wait for the money is almost over, having filmed the show last year. Once paid, he will take his daughter Jemima to Disneyland and buy his wife a new car. He speaks French, Italian and Spanish, but the first holiday they take will actually be a cruise to the Norwegian fjords with extended family.
Andrew offered advice for future contestants: "I wasn't really nervous in the chair itself. I enjoyed it. I love answering quiz questions and it is what I spend most of my time doing. But the actual win with the lights and Jeremy and the audience and everything.. you do sort of lose a bit of perspective of where you are. I would say, the biggest tip I've got is probably to practise the fastest figure first - because that's the key. I think once you get in the chair, that's the great thing about Millionaire and the format is that once you get in the chair, anyone can win a huge amount of money because I don't think they ever ask you sort of really, really genuinely very hard questions. It's just such a wide range of things that that's what makes it hard to progress quite a long way, but they can just fall for you."
Last month viewers saw Roman Dubowski win £1 million in the opening episode of the series. He told the Mirror he celebrated with a cup of tea after he correctly answered that a Bass Ale logo appeared in the novel Ulysses and paintings by Picasso and Manet. There have been a total of seven winners of the £1 million in the UK since the show began in 1998. Clarkson replaced Chris Tarrant as the host when the show returned in 2018 after a four-year break.
