- .Friends Helen Griffiths and Rina Evans say BBC’s decision to alter last night's ending has denied them prize-money and betrayed viewers
- .Mail on Sunday can reveal the show, broadcast to millions of viewers, was in fact filmed twice – and the contestants were ordered not to tell anyone
The BBC’s National Lottery game show is embroiled in a fakery row after two contestants accused bosses of cheating them out of £22,000 in prize money.
The women, who appeared on last night’s episode of ‘Break The Safe’, have revealed that the end of the show was secretly changed to produce different results.
Friends Helen Griffiths and Rina Evans say the BBC’s decision to alter the ending has denied them prize-money and betrayed viewers.
Lost out: Helen Griffiths (left) with friend Rina Evans on last night's Break The Safe Lottery show
The women have revealed that the end of the show was secretly changed to produce different results, denying them a £22,000 prize
Rina, 40, said: ‘The episode is a fake – it’s complete deception for the viewer. It is not something I would ever have expected from the BBC and people need to know the truth.’
The Mail on Sunday can reveal the show, broadcast to millions of viewers, was in fact filmed twice – and the contestants were ordered not to tell anyone.
The two versions, with different end results, were then put together and broadcast as a single, continuous episode.
Helen, also 40, said: ‘We had no expectations of winning but what we did expect was fair play.
'Instead, they have made it look like the whole thing had been filmed on one day – it is plain trickery.
'We even had to wear the same clothes and have our hair exactly the same. The whole thing was completely staged.’
Last night’s TV audience witnessed Rina, a mother-of three, and Helen dramatically lose out on £44,000 in the final round of the tense game show presented by Nick Knowles.
However, the pair, from Ammanford, Wales, have revealed the ending shown on BBC1 last night was ‘switched’ from the original and the rules were changed.
If the same rules had applied to both episodes, they would have won £22,000.
Last night's TV audience witnessed Rina, a mother-of three, and Helen, both from Ammanford, Wales, dramatically lose out on £44,000 in the final round of the tense game show presented by Nick Knowles (above)
Rina said: ‘We got a call from Stuart Harrison, the producer, literally the day after we had come all the way back to Wales to say they had decided the format was too difficult and they wanted to change the rules.
'However, in order for that to happen he said they needed us to fly back to Glasgow that night – which was the last thing we wanted to do. And he kept specifying on the phone, you must not tell anybody.’
Under the initial rules, the pair of contestants who make it to the final both had to push separate buttons at the same time in order to win prize-money accrued in the safe. Only Helen had succeeded, meaning the friends had initially walked away with nothing.
But the day after they had filmed the first episodes on June 26, the production company admitted to the contestants the ‘flawed’ format made it ‘impossible’ to win.
Under the new rules, only one contestant needed to hit the button to win half the prize money – meaning the Welsh pair had been entitled to £22,000 prize money the first time.
‘The new rules meant we had won the first time, so we thought they just wanted to re-shoot the final scene to show that,’ said Helen, a primary school teacher.
‘Instead they made us do the final round all over again. The crew kept drilling us about what we could say and what we couldn’t say. They even styled our hair exactly the same and made us say exactly the same lines as if we were actors. It was all about deceiving the audience.’
Rina added: ‘It was done in front of a skeleton audience of about 50 people at the most. All morning they said they were in a complete panic about finding people to sit in the audience. They were phoning friends and family and just grabbing people off the streets. The whole atmosphere was a sham.’
Helen said: ‘By that time, there was no natural reaction from either of us because it felt like a staged moment. We were expected to act out a natural, impromptu scene but we couldn’t because we aren’t actors. We came off the set feeling that we’d been used by the BBC to help fix their failed format. We went back to the hotel and cried.’
After returning to Wales ‘physically and emotionally exhausted’, Helen contacted the BBC to express her frustration at their treatment, and even asked for their episode to be scrapped.
The BBC last night denied any wrongdoing and said the show had fully complied with their editorial guidelines.
‘This is absolutely not a deception of viewers or contestants,’ said a spokeswoman.
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