‘I’D RATHER LOSE MY CAREER THAN LOSE JUDY’ – Shocking TV Revelation! The secret romance that almost destroyed Richard Madeley & Judy Finnigan’s careers!

Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan have opened up about the time they were split up by Granada bosses after their office romance was discovered. In their fresh-off-the-press Channel 5 documentary, “Richard and Judy: Our Best Bits – In Our Own Words,” the iconic duo delve into their storied history on television, from their individual career paths to becoming a powerhouse presenting team, famously fronting This Morning for over a decade.

The pair reminisce in the doc about the pivotal moment their feelings for each other emerged, sharing that it happened “in the darkness” of a taxi ride when “something shifted” Judy tells the audience, “Nothing happened not for a long time after that. It was just, our perceptions of each other changed.”

Despite the initial secrecy, Richard and Judy’s relationship flourished, leading them down the aisle in 1986. Dianne Nelmes, a former TV executive and producer, recalls in the documentary how she dismissed early whispers of the couple’s budding romance.

She recounts: “Rumours started that Richard and Judy were having an affair and I simply didn’t believe it. I remember at one point I got a few journalists together and read the riot act and said, ‘Will you stop all this gossip – they’ve got a great chemistry on screen and they are just good friends, so stop it’. Well, I never live that down.”

Richard Madeley recalled being ‘separated’ from his Judy when bosses found out about their romance(Image: (Image: GETTY))

With children Chloe and Jack as a young family(Image: No credit)

Richard revealed there was a “jealousy, resentment [and] disapproval” from bosses at the time, who felt “for some reason, this wasn’t quite on”. He went on to say: “They separated us, professionally, and that went on for, even after we got married in 1986. Even then, that somehow wasn’t enough.”

Richard and Judy continued to work for the same company, but separately, apart from one occasion when they hosted ITV’s Telethon, the broadcaster’s fundraising event. During this time, executives were considering who would be the ideal presenting pair for a new daytime chat show which soon became This Morning, according to the Express.

On This Morning from Liverpool in 1988(Image: No credit)

Recounting how they landed the job, the presenter said: “Suddenly one of them, Steve Morrison, the managing director, looked at the TV which had been flickering away for the last 15 hours, and there’s me and Judy presenting together. And he went… ‘Them! ‘”.

“‘They’re married. They’ve got kids. They’re a real couple, them. And they all went, ‘yeah!’ It was a kind of lightbulb moment. The next day, we got separate calls from the bosses asking if we’d like to do a pilot for this show, This Morning. It was only because of the Telethon, otherwise we’d not have been asked.”

While they were on the show together, they also balanced being parents to their children Chloe, 36, and Jack, 38, who were infants at the time. In addition, Judy has two other older children with her former husband David Henshaw. The couple are also doting grandparents to five grandchildren, including Chloe’s daughter, who will be celebrating her second birthday next month, and Jack’s two kids.