The couple, who introduced viewers to a new style of cosy on-the-sofa interviewing, first appeared on screen together as the hosts of ITV’s This Morning in 1988.

At the height of their success, after moving to Channel 4 in 2001, they attracted 2.5 million viewers.

In 2004, the couple introduced their Book Club which went on to become the single most important sales window for authors, responsible for selling more books than the country’s literary prizes put together.

To date Book Club, which recommends which books viewers should be reading, has sold over 10 million books and generated over £60 million in book sales. Its featured titles are known to increase sales by as much as 3,000 per cent overnight and it has turned at least eight authors into multimillionaires.

The “Richard and Judy effect” made Labyrinth, by Kate Mosse, into a number one best-seller in paperback fiction for weeks.
They moved to the UKTV digital channel Watch, initially managing to bring in 100,000 viewers but this dropped to just 5,000 and yesterday they announced it had been a “mutual decision” to end of their Richard and Judy chat show.

In a joint statement, Richard Madeley, 52, and Judy Finnigan, 60, said: “Some you win, some you lose.”

They added: “When we started we said we wanted to get ahead of the curve, as British television inevitably goes digital. Looks like we were a bit too far ahead of the curve! Perhaps a bridge too far too soon, despite UKTV’s strong support.

“But TV is all about taking risks and that means sometimes you fail. It was a really worthwhile experiment and we don’t regret it at all. Now we’re both going on to other projects, together and separately.”

The final edition of the show will be broadcast on July 3.

The couple’s company, Cactus TV, are currently in discussions about how the hugely successful Book Club can continue.

Other news about their chat show being cancelled on Watch, read The Telegraph announcement in full here

Discuss on the forum here

Richard and Judy nobody WATCHing is a post from: Book Addicts Book Group

The Brutal Art
Jesse Kellerman

Sucked into an investigation four decades cold, Ethan will uncover a secret legacy of shame and death, one that will touch horrifyingly close to home – and leave him fearing for his own life.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
Kate Summerscale

This true story has all the hallmarks of a classic gripping murder mystery. A body, a detective, a country house steeped in secrets and a whole family of suspects – it is the original Victorian whodunnit.

The Gargoyle
Andrew Davidson

As she spins her tale, Scheherazade fashion, and relates equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Greenland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life – and, finally, to love.

When Will There Be Good News?
Kate Atkinson

Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is an old friend – Jackson Brodie – himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted.

The 19th Wife
David Ebershoff

Bold, shocking and gripping, The 19th Wife expertly weaves together these two narratives: a pageturning literary mystery and an enthralling epic of love and faith.

The Bolter
Frances Osborne

Osborne tells the moving tale of betrayal and heartbreak behind Sackville’s road to scandal and return, painting a dazzling portrait of high society in the early twentieth century.

Netherland
Joseph O’Neill

Netherland is a novel of belonging and not belonging, and the uneasy state in between. It is a novel of a marriage foundering and recuperating, and of the shallows and depths of male friendship. With it, Joseph O’Neill has taken the anxieties and uncertainties of our new century and fashioned a work of extraordinary beauty and brilliance.

The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite
Beatrice Colin

Gripping and darkly seductive, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite showcases all the glitter and splendor of the brief heyday of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of Hollywood to its golden age. As it foreshadows the horrors of the Second World War, the novel asks what price is paid when identity becomes unfixed and the social order is upended.

December
Elizabeth H Winthrop

A compelling, ultimately uplifting novel about a family in crisis, showing the delicate web that connects a husband and wife, parents and children, and how easily it can tear.

Steven Galloway

Told with immediacy, grace and harrowing emotional accuracy, The Cellist of Sarajevo shows how, when the everyday act of crossing the street can risk lives, the human spirit is revealed in all its fortitude – and frailty.

Richard and Judy Book Club 2009 list of books is a post from: Book Addicts Book Group