A row erupted today after the cat was let out of the bag about the first £500,000 winner on ITV's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

Readers bombarded newspapers up and down the country with complaints after papers - including the Evening Press - carried stories about Peter Lee's big win.

A spokeswoman for the programme today blamed Press Association News for sending the story out to newspapers without observing an embargo on details of the show, only for PA to blame the show's publicists.

The programme spokeswoman said that the show had been recorded the night before - as always.

A decision was made to call a press conference for 3pm the next day - five hours before the programme was screened - to prevent the story leaking to the national press.

But she insisted details had been embargoed until 8pm, after the programme was aired.

That was denied today by the Press Association, the national news agency which covered the press conference.

A spokesman said: "The production company approached us and asked us to put it in all the papers."

During the programme, Peter Lee, 67, a former Royal Navy man from Wales, became the show's biggest ever winner by picking up £500,000, but bailed out of answering the question for £1 million.

Evening Press Editor Liz Page said today: "We published the press release in good faith but we are very sorry if we have upset our readers. We will make sure we do not spoil the suspense again."

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