Richard & Judy started with Channel 4 on 26 November 2001 and aired every weekday from 5pm to 6pm. Between 2006 and 2008, the Richard & Judy show shared this original with The Paul O'Grady Show, a programme that started in March 2006. For three months of each year, between 2006 and 2008, the Richard & Judy show occupied the 5pm to 6pm slot, and then the Paul O'Grady Show occupied the timeframe for the following three months. On the 15 August 2008 edition of the show, Richard stated that the following week's episode would be the last with Channel 4 and the final broadcast occurred on 22 August 2008.
2008–09: Watch
Following the show's departure from Channel 4, the producers of Richard & Judy subsequently signed a £2 million deal with the UKTV network Watch. Madeley and Finnigan renamed the show and hosted Richard & Judy's New Position from 7 October 2008. The couple stated that the new version would be "a high octane prime time show", with Madeley explaining, "we were both hugely impressed with the team at UKTV, and their proposal was attractive and fun and will give us the kind of flexibility in our personal lives which we have been looking for". The presenters continued featuring the programme's popular "Book Club" that had begun on their Channel 4 show. The Watch version of the show featured a sofa area for interviews, as well as a bar area where the star guests and the show's crew members gathered during broadcasts. Each week the show employed a celebrity barman; comedian Rufus Hound undertook the role in the first week's episode. Hound had been a frequent guest on the Channel 4 series. The first episode of the Watch series attracted an average audience of around 200,000 viewers. The second episode, in the 8pm timeslot, attracted 53,000 viewers. Watch channel representatives were reportedly satisfied with the ratings, stating that the show had started well. Ratings consistently fell for subsequent episodes, reaching a new low of 11,000 viewers. Following a Christmas break at the end of 2008, the show returned on 13 January 2009 in a new 6pm slot. The show also dropped the "New Position" section of its title and was called "Richard & Judy" again. By April 2009, ratings had slumped and the following month, an agreement was reached to terminate the show six months early. From the week of 8 June 2009, the show was reduced to a single weekly episode that aired at 4pm every Wednesday. The show's final episode was broadcast on 1 July 2009.
You Say We Pay
"You Say We Pay" was a daily competition that involved a viewer at home describing images on a TV screen for the show's two presenters to then identify; however, the contestant was not permitted to refer to the images by their respective names. For each correct answer provided by Madeley and Finnigan, the viewer received £1000. In January 2006, MP and Celebrity Big Brother contestant George Galloway entered the competition and won his housemates' weekly shopping budget. Lionel Blair, Abi Titmuss and Carol Vorderman also participated in "You Say We Pay" whilst they were guests on the programme.
Controversy
On 18 February 2007, The Mail on Sunday revealed allegations that the quiz was cheating viewers by inviting them to phone in after the winning contestant had already been chosen. The paper stressed that Madeley and Finnigan were unaware of any wrongdoing and the story was sold to the newspaper through a publicist named Jonathan Hartley. On 6 July 2007, the operator of the phone-in quiz was fined a record £150,000 by regulator ICSTIS. ICSTIS said the Channel 4 programme had shown a "reckless disregard" for viewers after inviting them to enter a competition once the potential winners had already been selected. In addition to the fine, ICSTIS ordered that all the money be paid back to those viewers affected, around £2.5 million, and referred the case to Ofcom. The media regulator has the right to impose its own ban if it feels the broadcasting code has been breached.
In 2004, the Richard & Judy Book Club was added as a regular segment of the show. It was credited as having a massive effect on the sales of the books it featured, much like Oprah's Book Club in the USA. Each year the segment featured ten books and discussions during the programme, often with guests. Alongside the discussions and programme features, the novels contended for the Richard & Judy Book of the Year Award, presented at the British Book Awards, where the winner was chosen by votes from the public. The Richard and Judy Book Club debuted as a website in autumn 2010, run in conjunction with retailer WH Smith. In 2007, Richard and Judy hosted a special Children's Book Club edition of the show as part of Channel 4's "Lost For Words" season. The featured books were chosen with the help of pupils from several schools around the UK. The New Writers Book Club was a feature launched in October 2008 focussing on debut authors.
Richard and Judy launched their wine club in 2005. Focusing on a different selection of wine each week, they reviewed the wines and gave tasting notes to the viewers.
