Talking in code

UKTV execs are congratulating themselves on landing Richard and Judy, who are taking their chatshow to the broadcaster later in the year once they complete their summer run on Channel 4. The talk is that the pair will be the lynchpins of a newly named channel as part of UKTV's branding review, following last year's successful relaunch of UKTV G2 as Dave. Anyway, the king and queen of the sofa were paraded before UKTV's worker bees at a staff meeting last week. For most staff their arrival came as quite a surprise, as the suits had been keeping the project under wraps by going to the lengths of codenaming their new signings "Bill and Ben". Suggestions that the new channel will be called Flobadob are apparently wide of the mark.