Richard Madeley - Biography

In a nutshell

Richard has always been somewhat of a media-bunny. Although he didn't attend University, he started off his career early working in local newspapers before getting a job in local radio (we can almost imagine him as an Alan Partridge type...) aged 19 where he was a news producer and presenter. So Richard has quite literally been on our screens for many, many years.

We should have guessed that Richard wouldn't have any trouble jumping ship to another channel in later life (think ITV to Channel 4 and then, slightly stupidly, to satellite channel Watch) because he left the BBC for its local rival Border Television to work as a reporter on their local news show, Lookaround.

He worked his way up and went from Border to Yorkshire to the much bigger Granada television in the north-west. It was here in 1982 that he met his partner (and, of course, fellow presenter) Judy Finnigan.

He hosted ITV's This Morning with Judy between 1998 through until 2001. After that show they were sensationally poached by Channel 4 to present an early evening (and, if we say so, slightly more upmarket) show called Richard & Judy. They quit this in 2008 and announced they were again moving ? this time to digital channel Watch. After only a month or so on there the ratings had dropped to as low as 20,000 viewers ? quite a dip from their average of 2 million on Channel 4.

One of our favourite embarrassing moments courtesy of Richard (of which there are quite a few to choose from) is when he asked Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant how his wife was. I mean, come on....

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