Holly and Brad take off to the BBC

I would have said the same about Paddy McGuiness until recently as well. The BBC seem to be using a lot of faces traditionally associated with ITV for their Saturday entertainment recently.

There is also the Simon Cowell dance show, with ex-TXF/BGT/DOI presenters/judges involved.

There don't seem to be as many broadcaster 'golden handcuff' deals anymore. Obviously Ant & Dec are and I think Schofield is. Is Graham Norton on a similar deal for the BBC?

Even Gary Lineker is apparently making an ITV quiz show.

Is Piers Morgan still on golden handcuffs with ITV?

Graham Norton's BBC contract is up for renewal early next year. His current deal was a three year extension due to run out in 2020. Graham has hinted he wants to reduce the amount of talk shows he does a year so maybe this could be key to his contract renewal in Spring 2020.


Piers Morgan's contract with ITV ends this year in December 2019. Whether he extends his contract again for another year is up in the air at the moment.

I'd be happy to see Piers' residency on planet Earth expire without an option to extend, let alone his contract with any particular broadcaster.

It''ll be After the Strictly final as the only Saturday left before Christmas this could air is the 21st December (the Strictly final is on December 14th)

Lineker has been working for other Sports broadcasters for years, plus the Walkers adverts of course.

Well, that's not right, despite what someone's added to Wikipedia, he didn't start presenting the lottery on a regular basis until 1998, very much as a "safe pair of hands" after the disaster that was Red Alert. Genome confirms that.

As far as I know, his first presenting job was a not very good show called Only Joking for ITV in 1992. This was a bit interesting because both the BBC and ITV launched shows at the same time involving members of the public telling jokes. The Beeb has Joker In The Pack, as seen on UKGameshows - http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Joker_in_the_Pack - and, as mentioned there, ITV had Only Joking with Bradley. I think Joker in the Pack was a licenced format the Beeb had acquired from the US, and ITV nipped in with their lookalike version first as a spoiler. Both of them flopped massively and I remember Only Joking was shoved off the network very quickly and the various regions shoved the remaining episodes out wherever they fancied it, I remember Bradley going on Gimme 5 to promote it and having to embarrassingly say that Granada were showing it at 11.30am on Saturday mornings.

After that he shuffled around telly and got various guest spots, you can see on Genome he appears on various quizzes and variety shows, and he and Joe Pasquale got a one-off special on ITV in 1994 which wasn't very good at all. But I remember Bradley saying one of his greatest moments was Bob Monkhouse coming up to him and saying "I really hope you and Pasquale get the success you deserve".

His first game show Midas Touch wasn't very good either and I'd suggest it was Wheel of Fortune that was his big break, he sent it up a bit and revitalised the show a bit, after Nicky Campbell had pretty much played it straight for the previous decade.

I'll get rid of that, then. 1998 is after Wheel of Fortune, so if he didn't host the lottery until then, the statement about him first rising to prominence there is incorrect.

He appeared on the 90s version of Celebrity Squares several times, that was pre Wheel of Fortune.

I know, and other game and variety shows. But Wheel of Fortune was the first programme he hosted where I think he went from being just some mid-ranking comedian to an established and popular host.

Bradley was around for many years before The Chase, but he always seemed a bit of an un-cool cheapo host who'd do various second or third rate short term gigs and his humour wasn't appreciated, the sort like as mentioned who would pop up in a box on Celebrity Squares. Like his mate Joe Pasquale.

It's good that after all those years in the business he got a big break and is now very much a hot property. He probably has more work offers than time available to do them.

Of course alongside his presenting career he had a successful acting career in Corrie and Law and Order UK among others.