Judith Keppel

Judith Cynthia Aline Keppel (born 18 August 1942) is a British quiz show contestant who was the first person to win one million pounds on the British television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. She appeared on the former BBC Two, now Channel 5, quiz show Eggheads from its inception in 2003, until she retired from the show in 2022. Early life Keppel was born at Wolverhampton, eldest of three children and only daughter of the Hon. Walter Arnold Crispian Keppel (1914–1996), DSC, and Aline Lucy (1918-2007), daughter of Brigadier-General John Harington, CB, CMG, of Chelmarsh Hall, Bridgnorth, Shropshire (son of Sir Richard Harington, 11th Baronet) and Lady Frances Aline, daughter of William Temple-Gore-Langton, 4th Earl Temple of Stowe. Walter Keppel was a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. The family moved around, thanks to various naval postings, before settling in London when Keppel was seventeen. She sat A-Levels at St Mary's School, Wantage, and then completed a secretarial course. Keppel is a granddaughter of Walter Keppel, 9th Earl of Albemarle. Her great-grandfather, Arnold Keppel, the 8th Earl, was the brother of George Keppel, the brother-in-law of Alice Keppel (a mistress of King Edward VII and a great-great-uncle of Queen Camilla of the United Kingdom, who is thus her third cousin. Through her grandfather, her ancestors include Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England, who were the subjects of her one-million-pound question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.