Stockport man wins £1 million on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Roman Dubowski turned a beer-logo memory into £1 million, becoming the seventh winner of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and showing why a simple quiz format still grips a national audience. The retired IT analyst, originally from Manchester and now living just outside Stockport, said he knew the answer to the 15th question straight away after leaning on lifelines earlier in the game.

Dubowski had spent about 20 years applying for the ITV show and had tried three times in all. He had already reached auditions and even received a filming date before being turned down in 2022, making the jackpot win as much a test of persistence as recall. On the night itself, he used Ask the Audience on an early mayonnaise question, where 93% of the studio audience picked the right answer, egg yolk, and later phoned his sister for help. He also said Jeremy Clarkson had advised him to use 50/50 whenever he had an “inkling” about the answer.

That advice mattered when the game reached its final hurdle. The last question pointed to a trademarked logo used since 1876, described in Ulysses and shown in works by Édouard Manet and Pablo Picasso. The choices were Bass Ale, The Famous Grouse, Coca-Cola and Stella Artois. After 50/50 narrowed the field to Bass Ale and Coca-Cola, Dubowski picked Bass Ale, saying he had seen Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère at The Courtauld Gallery in London and remembered the red triangle on Bass beer. It was enough to secure the top prize and make him the show’s seventh £1 million winner.

He said the win felt “unreal” and that it did not sink in until later. He had to have a cup of tea afterwards. Dubowski plans to buy a new house with the money and hopes to travel to New Zealand and South America, a windfall that will change his own finances but also underlines the low-cost, high-drama economics of quiz television. One contestant, one set, 15 questions and a jackpot that can still stop a country for a few minutes: that remains a hard formula to beat.