Jeremy Clarkson has returned with a new series of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire as ITV keeps the £1 million top prize in place. The figure now carries a different weight than it did when the show launched in 1998, and that gap sits at the centre of the latest criticism.
1998 Prize, 2026 Value
The programme began in 1998 with Chris Tarrant as host, and the top prize has stayed at £1 million. In 1998 money, that sum had the same purchasing power as around £2.5 million today, which is why the jackpot now looks out of step with the show’s original pitch.
ITV is capping the fund at £1 million, keeping the ceiling fixed even as the buying power of the prize has shifted. For viewers, that means the headline number has remained unchanged while the real-world value behind it has not.
Clarkson’s 2018 Revival
Clarkson revived the programme in 2018, giving the format a second life on television. The return matters because the host change did not solve the bigger audience problem: the show’s peak remains the 1999 run that drew a reported 19 million viewers.
Recent figures from March showed some episodes down to around 1.8 million viewers. That is a sharp drop from the show’s late-1990s reach, and it leaves ITV leaning on a format whose audience no longer matches its old scale.
ITVX and the Audience Drop
Episodes are available to watch on ITVX, which gives the series a platform beyond the broadcast slot. Even so, the combination of a fixed £1 million jackpot and a much smaller audience suggests the show is now trading more on recognition than on the kind of mass event television it once delivered.
For ITV, the practical question is whether a prize still described as £1 million can keep doing the work of a larger-sounding event when 1999-level viewing is long gone. Clarkson has helped keep the format alive, but the numbers now point to a show being sustained by nostalgia, not scale.
