Phone a friend by all means, but if you're a contestant on the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? you should consider phoning a solicitor as well.
That's the opinion of the president of the Law Society of Ireland, Mr Ward McEllin, who has advised participants in the TV series to draw up legal agreements with their designated telephone friends, and so avoid problems afterwards on how the winnings should be shared.
The concept of a free telephone consultation is alien to lawyers everywhere, of course. But Mr McEllin says legal agreements are necessary because of the risk to contestants of subsequent legal challenges, such as those which have faced some Lotto winners in the past. The message is that a friend in need should be a friend in deed, and the deed should be properly witnessed.
The agreements - which presumably, given the propensity of friends to give the wrong answers, would have to be on a "no foal, no fee" basis - could be particularly beneficial if a contestant won the maximum prize, as Judith Keppel did on the ITV version recently.
En route to £1 million, Ms Keppel had to phone her friend on the £125,000 question, which asked her to complete the stage direction from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale: "Exit, pursued by a . . ." Many viewers would have guessed "lawyer" but the options were "clown", "tiger", "bear", and "dog". Ms Keppel's friend correctly nominated "bear", and the rest was history. Or at least the £1 million question was history ("Which king was married to Eleanor of Acquitaine?"), a subject Ms Keppel could deal with unaided.
It is "only a matter of time" before £1 million is won on the RTE show, says Mr McEllin, and "the question will arise as to what debt is owed the friend". He warned: "A person to whom you owe a debt could become an enemy. If they become jealous of your good fortune as a result of them having assisted you, it could lead to a High Court action and the eventual disintegration of your friendship."
Mr McEllin said it was his opinion that in the absence of an agreement, a telephone friend would not be legally entitled to a share of the winnings. In such a case, "it would be all down to the generosity of the contestant.
And, of course, one man's generosity is another's stinginess."
