Millionaires Biggest and Best Loser Hits Headlines!

Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 26 October 2008 Millionaire's favourite loser

Ella Mizrahi's appearance on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? should become a YouTube classic, reports Donna Chisholm .

As a baby she was nannied by the Topp Twins, at seven she had a role in her first feature film, as an extra in Desperate Remedies. And now at 22, Ella Mizrahi has made another name for herself: Who Wants to be a Millionaire's youngest Kiwi contestant and the girl most likely to have an audience tearing its hair out or falling in love with her.

In an appearance destined to end up a YouTube hit, Mizrahi - daughter of high-profile Auckland theatre director and installation artist Mike Mizrahi - turned her 30 minutes of fame into a one-woman comedy routine. And at the end of it, host Mike Hosking admitted to the Sunday Star-Times, he wasn't sure if she was pulling his leg. "I loved her - she was so eclectic and quirky that I could never tell if she was serious or not."

But he says that by the time she walked away with her $4000, she had the audience eating out of her hand.

"Everyone fell in love with her. It was brilliant and the atmosphere was electric. There are two sorts of people who go on Millionaire. There are the ones who take it seriously and do the pub quizzes and who are out to do well, and the ones who just see it as a once in a lifetime opportunity and go out to have a great time.

"She was one of those - she told me afterwards she would have been more than happy to go home with $1000. She was fizzing at the bung."

Mizrahi, an opera singer and theatre performer, talked her way through seven questions in Tuesday's show in what her father later called a "very lateral stream of consciousness".

She told the Star-Times from Melbourne, where she is an advertising co-ordinator, that she's using the money for a European "OE". So was she pulling the host's leg? "I was rarking him up the whole time. And I got to say 'ho' on national television."

She says since her appearance - watched by around 600,000 - she's never been more popular, with people Googling her name and asking to befriend her on Facebook. "I expected all my friends would say 'Oh my God, Ella you retard', but they've been so sweet."

ELLA MIZRAHI'S 30 MINUTES OF FAME

Q: Name Jools Topp's yodelling sister.

Mizrahi: "I actually know the Topp Twins; they were my first nannies . . . I had the nicest childhood."

Q: Robbie Deans coaches which Super 14 team?:

Mizrahi: "Tough call" - after 94 per cent of the audience chose Canterbury.

Q: Chicago is the largest city in which state? Idaho, Illinois, Indiana or Iowa.

Mizrahi: "I so should know this. If I took 50-50 I still wouldn't know. They are all the same. They all start with i. Chicago Idaho? No, that's too many o-ho's. I reckon, having done a lot of research in this subject, it's between Indiana and Iowa."

After her phone-a-friend, actor Michael Morrissey, told her the answer was Illinois Mizrahi said: "Yeah, it sounds right. It rolls off the tongue nicely." Hosking: "And the capital of Illinois is?" Mizrahi: "San Diego."

Q: Imitating a celebrated Chinese style of decoration is the blue and white porcelain what pattern? Willow, swallow, paisley or husk.

Mizrahi: "I can see it. My grandmother has the plates. There's a swallow on it and a little house. I reckon it's paisley . . . But then there's a swallow on it. It's got swallows: check, willows: check. But husk?"

Hosking: "So it's got swallows and willows but you're going for paisley?"

Mizrahi: "I can see why that would be confusing for you."

Hosking: "Shall we use a lifeline?"

Mizrahi: "No! Why?"

Hosking: "Because I just thought we might want to . . . What if we used our 50-50 and paisley dropped out?"

Mizrahi: "That would be disastrous. But luckily paisley is still here because I haven't used it."

Mizrahi subsequently went 50-50 - paisley dropped out - and she correctly chose willow.

Q: Which New Zealander built the revolutionary V1000 motorbike in his garage at home? Burt Munro, Bruce McLaren, John Britten or Josh Coppins?

Mizrahi: "Anthony Hopkins."

Hosking, reaching for his chequebook: "How much to leave?"

Viewers can watch the show on the internet on tvnzondemand.co.nz

* WWTBAM, TV1, Tuesdays, 8.30pm.