No more job but champ leaves Million Dollar Minute smiling

An unemployed science and technical writer has won $200,000 on Seven’s Million Dollar Minute in the same week he was retrenched from his job.

Dennis Callegari chose to leave the show yesterday with $202,000 after 5 shows, thanks to a little help from his reading habit.

“Million Dollar Minute is the show I have been designed for,” he said. “I had read a full set of encyclopedias from A to Z by the age of 10… In the last eight years alone I have read 968 books from Boroondara Local Library and that doesn’t include the additional 832 books I have also bought and read over that time period.”

“Our family is going to live off the win so I can concentrate on writing a detective novel set in World War II in Hollywood … and in the meantime we are taking the whole extended family to see Les Miserable – at least a dozen of us will be in the front row with smiles from ear to ear,” he said.

Host Simon Reeve, said “He has a depth of knowledge possibly greater than anyone I’ve seen on the show and very obviously someone who has read prolifically in his life.”