Lesser known, forgotten or unusual presenting duos

I can't even remember that, and I watched the first series

Well, as it turned out they were a hopeless pairing who never gelled, although the whole programme was totally misconceived. The idea of a big star and her cheeky sidekick was a perfectly good one, though, but Lulu was just rubbish at it. I mentioned Terry Alderton a while back because I was reminded of him when Rob Beckett started getting primetime gigs - Alderton was getting a good reputation on the stand-up circuit and he seemed to be the kind of person who could work on mainstream TV. Sadly the show was very bad and it set his career back a bit. Happily since then he's gone back to stand-up and I know he's now considered one of the best acts on the circuit - albeit now his current material is far removed from his game show host persona.

It's interesting to think of people like Alderton who got a big break early on and it didn't work out. It almost happened to Lee Mack when he was booked to host C4's stand-up series Gas after he hadn't been on the circuit for very long at all. He says in his book it didn't do him many favours because he didn't have enough material (they brought in Dominic Holland to help him write the scripts, and when he came in on the first day breezily said, "Well, we've got a lot of work to do, haven't we?") and I think there was a bit of resentment from other comedians that he'd been fast-tracked.



Well, he did say he preferred Radiohead, but I doubt that was the whole reason because it wasn't like he was slagging them off to their faces. Clearly they decided it just hadn't worked out for some reason and it was never going to work out, but I never thought it was Redmond's fault, really, because it didn't help that they hired Brian Dowling at the same time who got all the publicity and all the column inches and James just faded into the background. They should have had a couple of months of just Cat and James to get him established before they started getting other presenters in, it was as if they were replacing him before he even started.

It was a real shame because Redmond was very likeable and he'd been on the show quite a lot previously and been very funny. I've said this before but for ages I had an episode on an old tape from a few months before he joined where he's in the Dec Says sketch and he was hilarious, the cast and crew were in absolute hysterics. I'm assuming that was the exact moment they decided to offer him the job. Such a shame they didn't stick with him, it was the first time he'd appeared as himself as well.



Well, this was a total disaster, they were such a weird couple, more like mother and son than husband and wife. They were such a mismatch, but it didn't help that Sharron was so bad. I remember The Box magazine saying that Rick had clearly sensed the void where Sharron was supposed to be so decided he had to fill the gap with more and more talking.

It nearly didn't happen, of course, because Rick Adams was totally nailed on to do Live and Kicking, to the extent Simeon Courtie was told he definitely wouldn't get it and so defected to ITV, and then they did a pilot with Zoe and Rick and it was a total disaster. And they would have been an odd couple as well, I think. I quite liked Rick Adams at the time but I think he was always at his best as a solo host.



Yeah, this was a total disaster, it was seriously being suggested that This Morning might be axed. We've mentioned Bargain Hunt and I think it was this period that cemented it as a big hit because This Morning was declining so badly. For a while it was finishing at twelve o'clock to avoid it completely.

That was a really iffy period for ITV daytime, after they'd been so dominant for so long, losing Richard and Judy themselves was so careless but then they messed up their replacements. Then you also had them losing Home and Away leaving that huge chasm at teatime which they took ages to fill, plus Crossroads being rubbish, and even that demented revamp in the spring of 2000 where they moved everything around - with Loose Women in the morning and Trisha in the afternoon - and then moved it all back again a month later. The Beeb took the advantage and they've been in the lead ever since.

I guess Twiggy and Coleen is another example of when programmes decide not to go for the obvious choice and go a bit left-field, because Fern Britton and John Leslie had been regular presenters but presumably they decided they didn't have enough sparkle to do it full-time - I guess they assumed it would just seem like Richard and Judy were still "on holiday" and they wanted a clean break - so went for a completely new line-up. You could also use that example for The Big Breakfast, where Liza Tarbuck had been a regular stand-in but they went for Kelly Brook as the full-time replacement, and The One Show where they picked Jason Manford instead of Uncle Matt. And in all cases they did end up going back to the stand-ins, albeit in Manford's case it wasn't much to do with his on-screen work.

That's what I mean, so they only get a week and two days in and then the show's off air for a while due to 9/11. (Actually, ITV preempted them by splitting the partnership up after just a week, which I didn't realise happened so swiftly.)

Was this morning off for the rest of that week?

Also it was partly because Richard and judy went to ch4 that help cause further problems for itv. There tea time show did rather well. I do remember watching all the time along with Paul. When Paul went to channel 4 that moved R&j to two 12 week blocks one starting in Jan and other in july and that meant there were own air during London bombings.

When did John Leslie and Lorraine Kelly start doing this morning and who were there paired with?

Richard and Judy would probably have stayed on longer if it wasn't for their disagreements over the programme's content with Maureen Duffy, then head of daytime.

What did that woman want?

Natalie Casey has had various TV roles before and since BBLB, which included a leading role in 2 Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps for all 9 series over 10 years, and although she has mostly done voiceover work since then, I'd hardly say she has been forgotten by history.

It eventually did well but Richard and Judy really struggled initially when they moved to Channel Four and there were regular suggestions for the first year or so that it was going to be axed. Here's a report about the editor abruptly departing in early 2002 which refers to it as "the troubled programme" - https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/feb/27/channel4.broadcasting - and I remember later in 2002 it was replaced by Celebrity Big Brother's Little Brother for two weeks and everyone assumed it was on the way out. But eventually they turned it around and it became a success.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/jul/25/broadcasting1

There's more here as well: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/may/07/channel4.itv

Apparently Richard and Judy weren't impressed with the new title sequence introduced in 2000.

They talk about that in their autobiography.

I wonder what became clear during their first week as a pairing on air, that hadn't become clear during all the rehearsals they must have done? Surely bosses had fair warning that the partnership wasn't going to work?