What to watch
This Morning – 30 Unforgettable Years ITV, 7.30PM
You get a fabulous sense of how much television has changed – and how we’ve changed our lives around it – in this entertaining 90-minute tribute to one of the stalwarts of daytime TV. Of course, in October 1988, when the then-unknown husband-and-wife duo Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan first began to broadcast from Liverpool’s Albert Dock, they were pioneers. Back then, the daytime schedules were a veritable desert. But with a punchy magazine-style mix of short features, covering everything from fashion and cookery to pop music and medical issues, “Richard and Judy” were soon attracting a sizeable audience.
They return tonight, to help current hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby flesh out the programme’s history. The emphasis is firmly on laughs, showcasing many of the show’s more out-there moments and live cock-ups (among them the Chippendales bumshot scandal) from over the last three decades. There is clip after clip of the many household names who got their television break on the show, from David Gandy to the Spice Girls and Take That. It ends up being gaspingly funny and achingly nostalgic at once.