A male stripper who won £70,000 on game shows has revealed how he 'blagged' his way to the final round of The Weakest Link - by colluding with contestants.
Mike Stratton, 55, pocketed tens of thousands of pounds in cash and prizes after getting onto 18 TV quizzes, including Bullseye, Decimate and Fear Factor.
And after trying for a baby for eight years with wife Donna Stratton, 52, he even used £10,000 of his winning to pay for IVF treatment - helping him have three kids.
But the crafty father has now divulged how he got down to the last two on The Weakest Link after persuading unsuspecting players not to vote him off.
Mike said before the show began filming, he followed individual contestants to the studio's toilets where they made ‘secret’ pacts not to evict each other.
And he went on to speak to seven out of the nine participants without any of them realising they were part of his master plan.
Mike said several disgruntled contestants, who’d been culled from the quiz, noticed he’d stitched them up while waiting for the show to end in the green room.
But when they complained to feared question master Anne Robinson, she dismissed their rage and told him that she ‘loved’ his cunning scheme.
Baring all, Mike confessed: “I cheated on The Weakest Link. Every time somebody left the room, I went with them.
“I’d say something like, ‘I tell you what, they’re going to vote me and you off straight away, aren’t they?’.
“So I said, ‘I won’t vote for you and you won’t vote for me, yeah?’ And I did that all day.
“By the time it came to film the show, there were only two people who I hadn’t done it to.
"My name never got mentioned until there were three of us left: Me, a girl, and this really clever guy.
"And I looked at the girl, and I said ‘Me and you in the final?’ and she said, ‘Yep,’ and we voted this guy off.
“One of the guys in the green room said, ‘You hear what he said then? He said before to me if I didn’t vote for him, he wouldn’t vote for me.’ Another said the same thing.
“They all went and complained to Anne Robinson about me. But she loved it. She came and gave me a hug and everything.
“You’re allowed to collude with other people, you see, there’s nothing against it in the rules.
"It’s just I did it with everybody, so everybody was annoyed with me.”
Mike said he first got ‘hooked’ on quizzes when his wife gave him a flyer for a game show called ‘Greed’, hosted by Jerry Springer, in 2001.
The advert was sent to his family's sunbed shop, in Wigan, Gtr Manchester, where he worked while also touring Europe with his male stripper troupe, called The X-men.
Mike said he used his charisma and unusual job title to get onto the programme and was shocked when he walked away with £10,000 during his short appearance.
And that led him to start applying to more game shows where he felt he could turn a healthy profit in a matter of minutes.
Mike Stratton, 55, pocketed tens of thousands of pounds in cash and prizes after getting onto 18 TV quizzes, including Bullseye, Decimate and Fear Factor.
And after trying for a baby for eight years with wife Donna Stratton, 52, he even used £10,000 of his winning to pay for IVF treatment - helping him have three kids.
But the crafty father has now divulged how he got down to the last two on The Weakest Link after persuading unsuspecting players not to vote him off.
Mike said before the show began filming, he followed individual contestants to the studio's toilets where they made ‘secret’ pacts not to evict each other.
And he went on to speak to seven out of the nine participants without any of them realising they were part of his master plan.
Mike said several disgruntled contestants, who’d been culled from the quiz, noticed he’d stitched them up while waiting for the show to end in the green room.
But when they complained to feared question master Anne Robinson, she dismissed their rage and told him that she ‘loved’ his cunning scheme.
Baring all, Mike confessed: “I cheated on The Weakest Link. Every time somebody left the room, I went with them.
“I’d say something like, ‘I tell you what, they’re going to vote me and you off straight away, aren’t they?’.
“So I said, ‘I won’t vote for you and you won’t vote for me, yeah?’ And I did that all day.
“By the time it came to film the show, there were only two people who I hadn’t done it to.
"My name never got mentioned until there were three of us left: Me, a girl, and this really clever guy.
"And I looked at the girl, and I said ‘Me and you in the final?’ and she said, ‘Yep,’ and we voted this guy off.
“One of the guys in the green room said, ‘You hear what he said then? He said before to me if I didn’t vote for him, he wouldn’t vote for me.’ Another said the same thing.
“They all went and complained to Anne Robinson about me. But she loved it. She came and gave me a hug and everything.
“You’re allowed to collude with other people, you see, there’s nothing against it in the rules.
"It’s just I did it with everybody, so everybody was annoyed with me.”
Mike said he first got ‘hooked’ on quizzes when his wife gave him a flyer for a game show called ‘Greed’, hosted by Jerry Springer, in 2001.
The advert was sent to his family's sunbed shop, in Wigan, Gtr Manchester, where he worked while also touring Europe with his male stripper troupe, called The X-men.
Mike said he used his charisma and unusual job title to get onto the programme and was shocked when he walked away with £10,000 during his short appearance.
And that led him to start applying to more game shows where he felt he could turn a healthy profit in a matter of minutes.
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FunTranscript
00:00 Hi everyone, I'm Mike Stratton, also known on social media as Game Show Guy.
00:07 Now over the years I've been on that many game shows, 18 in fact, that I decided to
00:12 write a book and here it is.
00:17 This book tells you how to get on game shows, where to find them in the first place, how
00:20 to fill the application form in and lots of other tips and cheats I think you should know.
00:25 It also tells you different stories of me on the game shows, how I won money and how
00:29 I also lost it.
00:33 Okay now this is actually me on Decimate.
00:36 It was a show in 2016 hosted by Shane Ritchie.
00:40 There was three rounds, three people on the show.
00:43 What we didn't know at the time was that for each round the questions got harder.
00:47 In the BBC TV show Bargain Hunt, contestants are given what amount of money with which
00:51 to buy their items.
00:53 Is it £100, £200 or £300?
00:59 Now I didn't know the answer to this one, but I have seen it a couple of times where
01:04 they've bought items that cost over £100, so I sort of guessed that it would be the
01:10 higher figure rather than low.
01:12 So let's see what I went with.
01:13 I know they had two teams in the same colour t-shirts, red and blue.
01:14 I don't remember how much money they were given.
01:15 Well I've seen them buy items, I thought one they bought an item that was over £100,
01:16 I'm sure it was.
01:17 I'm going to go with £300.
01:30 I'm not 100%.
01:31 There's Joanie at the back nodding her head, she knew the answer.
01:35 I don't know, but it would be a bit.
01:39 Yeah.
01:40 £300.
01:41 We're going to lock in £300.
01:42 This is right, we're going to lock in column number 3 and protect another £1,200.
01:43 Is £300 the correct answer?
01:50 It certainly is.
01:51 Well done Mike, good play.
01:52 Well done.
01:53 Well done.