Richard Madeley has spoken about the reasons his wife and former co-presenter Judy Finnigan stepped down from a career in television.
Madeley and Finnigan, who got married in 1986, presented together for decades on the ITV chat show This Morning and the Channel 4 series Richard and Judy.
Finnigan, now 77, has largely stepped back from the world of TV, with her last regular hosting job alongside Madeley being the UKTV series Richard and Judy's New Position, which ran from 2008 to 2009. (She subsequently served as a regular panellist on ITV’s Loose Women between 2014 and 2015, and has made a number of appearances elsewhere.)
Speaking to The Telegraph, Madeley spoke about Finnigan’s decision to retire from regular TV presenting.
“She’s fine,” he told the outlet. “We run the Richard and Judy Book Club, and we’ve got a contract to do that for two years, and that takes up our time together.
“She was always quite a reluctant television presenter, Judy. Like a lot of us, she sort of fell into it. She wasn’t ever particularly ambitious, she was just f***ing good – I mean really good – at her job, and that’s why she did so well. And obviously, we clicked together on screen.”
Richard and Judy’s Book Club began as a segment on their TV chat show, and became a popular and influential source of book recommendations.
He added: “She loves not being on telly. Just loves it.”
In the interview, Madeley, 70, also batted away the comparisons to Alan Partridge that have abounded throughout his late career.
Fans and detracters have long likened Madeley’s presenting style to Partridge, the blustering and banal Norfolk broadcaster played by Steve Coogan.
“To be honest with you, I couldn’t give a tuppeny f***,” Madeley said, when asked about the comparison.
Madeley’s latest venture is a Channel 5 documentary in which he visits a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
“When I walked into the hangar, the shock was phenomenal,” Madeley said, recalling the experience. “It’s eerily quiet. That took a little while to sink in. But it was the visual shock of just seeing all of these men and knowing that what I was looking at was their permanent state of being.
“This isn’t a transit camp,” he continued. “This is their present, their future and their death. And it is really disturbing, whatever they’ve done, to see human beings held in conditions like that.”
Richard Madeley: Inside the World’s Mega Prison begins on Channel 5 at 9pm on 27 May.
