Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Did they stop handing out the cheques towards the end of the series with Chris? There aren't that many physical banks left on the high street to pay those in to these days, Jeremy will have to load up Internet Banking and do a bank transfer!

You can always pay in at the Post Office.

They could use NFC and knock smartphones together in some sort of horrific product placement deal with Paypal.

As mobile phones are banned for contestants and audience I doubt that.

Maybe they'll have the case of £1 Million in Cash in a case at the front like they did on the earlier series.

I would say given we're talking very high values of money and that cheques still do just about exist nowadays, they'll continue handing the cheques as it's a very clever way of giving the contestant the prize right in their hand whilst the gameplay is still in action.

As the prize is tangible and is in their hand then I can imagine the contestant is less likely to risk it.

That was never a real million pounds and those cheques were always just props.

The cheques were good (pre-product placement) promotion for Barclays too.

How did they get away with that were Barclays funding some of the prize fund and therefore they classed it as ‘prize placment’? The Barclays logo did disappear eventually either way I suspect there will be product placment on the cheques come Saturday.

Although I suspect product placment in TV always existed, but via means of a cheeky back hander to the producers. Otherwise why would you need the adverts warning of the possibility of it?

I imagine there were ways you could get away with it, if no acrual money changed hands? I don't know how it worked, but these companies likely appreciated the publicity regardless.

I'm sure I read in the early days the cheques were genuine. If no payment was made though nothing to worry about in the pre-product placement era, just like the big cheques in the telethons.

The point is though, why would you promote the bank for no reason?

Do they really need to bother with the cheques? They can surely dispense with that, and with it the, 'but we don't want to give you that' shtick.