A male stripper who won £70,000 on game shows has revealed how he 'blagged' his way to the final round of The Weakest Link - by colluding with contestants.<br /><br />Mike Stratton, 55, pocketed tens of thousands of pounds in cash and prizes after getting onto 18 TV quizzes, including Bullseye, Decimate and Fear Factor.<br /><br />And after trying for a baby for eight years with wife Donna Stratton, 52, he even used £10,000 of his winning to pay for IVF treatment - helping him have three kids.<br /><br />But the crafty father has now divulged how he got down to the last two on The Weakest Link after persuading unsuspecting players not to vote him off.<br /><br />Mike said before the show began filming, he followed individual contestants to the studio's toilets where they made ‘secret’ pacts not to evict each other.<br /><br />And he went on to speak to seven out of the nine participants without any of them realising they were part of his master plan.<br /><br />Mike said several disgruntled contestants, who’d been culled from the quiz, noticed he’d stitched them up while waiting for the show to end in the green room.<br /><br />But when they complained to feared question master Anne Robinson, she dismissed their rage and told him that she ‘loved’ his cunning scheme.<br /><br />Baring all, Mike confessed: “I cheated on The Weakest Link. Every time somebody left the room, I went with them. <br /><br />“I’d say something like, ‘I tell you what, they’re going to vote me and you off straight away, aren’t they?’. <br /><br />“So I said, ‘I won’t vote for you and you won’t vote for me, yeah?’ And I did that all day.<br /><br />“By the time it came to film the show, there were only two people who I hadn’t done it to. <br /><br />"My name never got mentioned until there were three of us left: Me, a girl, and this really clever guy. <br /><br />"And I looked at the girl, and I said ‘Me and you in the final?’ and she said, ‘Yep,’ and we voted this guy off.<br /><br />“One of the guys in the green room said, ‘You hear what he said then? He said before to me if I didn’t vote for him, he wouldn’t vote for me.’ Another said the same thing. <br /><br />“They all went and complained to Anne Robinson about me. But she loved it. She came and gave me a hug and everything.<br /><br />“You’re allowed to collude with other people, you see, there’s nothing against it in the rules. <br /><br />"It’s just I did it with everybody, so everybody was annoyed with me.”<br /><br />Mike said he first got ‘hooked’ on quizzes when his wife gave him a flyer for a game show called ‘Greed’, hosted by Jerry Springer, in 2001.<br /><br />The advert was sent to his family's sunbed shop, in Wigan, Gtr Manchester, where he worked while also touring Europe with his male stripper troupe, called The X-men.<br /><br />Mike said he used his charisma and unusual job title to get onto the programme and was shocked when he walked away with £10,000 during his short appearance.<br /><br />And that led him to start applying to more game shows where he felt he could turn a healthy profit in a matter of minutes.
