Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan: loved by slothful students and stay-at-home parents across the country
They're off again. Following recent rumours that Judy Finnigan was going to withdraw from presenting duties on Channel 4's Richard & Judy Show to write a book, she and husband Richard Madeley have announced instead that they're moving to digital broadcaster UKTV.
In a lock, stock and barrel move the production company, both presenters, the producers and their mighty Richard & Judy Book Club are being packed into crates at the end of August and moved to their new home on an, as yet, unspecified but re-branded UKTV channel.
After the success of Dave's (formerly UKTV G2) re-launch, presumably the new female-skewed channel will be called something like Nikki or Michelle. Coming next on Michelle ... Why not?
Chins scraped audibly on the floor when the couple announced they were leaving daytime hit This Morning on ITV to try their luck as the faces of Channel 4 teatime. But after a short bedding-in period, students, freelancers and stay-at-home parents removed their black armbands, adjusted to the equally cosy combination of Fern and Phil and tuned in to Channel 4 for a spot of bonus celebrity chat in the afternoon.
But will they get anything like the viewing figures (and come to that - the celebrities) enjoyed by their Channel 4 show as they disappear into the hinterland of digital daytime? It's great they're not retiring completely. The airwaves wouldn't be the same without Richard's constant foot-in-mouth faux pas or Judy's indulgent eye-rolling when her husband, yet again, shames her to the core. They were meant to be exhibited in some way, these two, not hidden away to waste all those golden moments on their own four walls.
But does the trajectory of their TV career bode ill for the future of this fascinating duo? It doesn't look good on a graph of viewing figures. Perhaps Richard's still got the fight in him, but Judy looks like a woman who'd prefer to sit in her fleecy slippers and do a puzzler than ride the bucking bronco of live television on a daily basis.
And what now for celebrity chat? No Parky. No Richard & Judy. BBC Breakfast and GMTV are now the only year-round places you can go to plug your new cookbook. Who will fill the frankly enormous hole in terrestrial daytime once the mother and father of us all are gone for good?
