Bookplanet: the UK counterpart of Oprah's Book Club may have an even bigger impact there than she has here

Richard and Judy’s cultural revolution
The literary slot on a chat show is changing the reading habits of the nation. The TV couple tell Deirdre Fernand how they overcame the sneers

Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, is grateful to them. So is the author Julian Barnes, who speaks glowingly of their contribution and commitment to the written word. So who are these lions of literary life?

You may know them as television’s most feted married couple. After 18 years in the business, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan are the acknowledged sovereigns of daytime programming, broadcasting each weekday at 5pm. But what you may not realise is that since they launched their book club two years ago they have presided over their very own cultural revolution.

If their popular show has transformed Britain’s teatime viewing, then their weekly book slot is also transforming our reading habits.

According to The Bookseller, the magazine of the publishing trade, their endorsements are responsible for more than one in 50 books sold in Britain, doing for some titles what Delia has done for watercress and cranberries. The power of the 10-minute weekly slot has both astonished and revolutionised the book world. They call it, simply, the “Richard and Judy effect”.

They are used to being feted. As befits their elevated status, they broadcast from studios which are more palatial than workaday. A converted polystyrene factory in south London, they have his-and-hers imperial dressing rooms and a resident chef. Guests are plied with designer gifts and offered wine and gargantuan canapés after the show.

There is, however, one person to whom the gilded pair defer. She happens to be their boss, Amanda Ross, the joint MD of their production company. She is also the architect of their book club. The breadth and depth of her literary selection is why, after the show, Richard and Judy shoot off home sharpish. “We have supper and then we read. We sit up in bed side by side trying to finish the books,” says Madeley. “It’s like having homework.”

In a recent newspaper poll, Ross won first place in the top 50 most influential people in publishing. “I don’t know what a literary book is,” says Ross, who admits that she modelled the club on Oprah Winfrey’s in the United States. “I only know good stories.”

This month a novel by Kate Mosse, Labyrinth, entered its sixth week as a No 1 bestseller for paperback fiction. The day after it was lauded on the book club by guest reviewers Carol Thatcher and Bettany Hughes, its publisher received more than 50,000 orders. According to figures released by The Bookseller, sales of the titles featured in the first year were worth £25m. The next year it was £18m.

Alice Sebold, whose novel The Lovely Bones was featured early on, sold 1m copies of her book. Before Bob Geldof sat on the sofa and compared Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea with Charles Dickens, it had sold only 3,500 copies.

It, too, has now shifted more than a million. A recent survey revealed that some 1.8m people said that they had bought a title because of its R&J recommendation.

Ross chooses 16 books a year, picked from a long-list of perhaps 600 or more by researchers. The team make a short film about the author and then invite celebrities to the studio to air their views.

Last week saw James Cracknell, the Atlantic rower, and Rula Lenska, the actress, locked in discussion about March, a novel about the American civil war.

“We could have sat around and jerked off for 10 minutes about the book,” says Madeley. “But the way it’s done with the film and then the studio discussion works. Our celebrities are not recognised intellectuals. We have young, funky people like Radio 1 DJ Sarah Cox in to talk about the titles. Then readers think, ‘Oh, I’m not so frightened’.”

The book world has moved from early sniffiness to current slavering over the show. When Madeley first visited his local Waterstone’s shop in Hampstead, north London, he asked the manager if he would be promoting any of their choices. The man pulled a face. “I don’t think it’s very Hampstead,” he told Madeley.

“But I went back the next year,” adds Madeley, “and it was placards all over the place.”

“There was ridiculous snobbery at the beginning,” says Finnigan. “People were asking, ‘Richard and Judy? Can they read?’ ”

In fact Finnigan, 57, read English and drama at Bristol University; Madeley, 49, worked in local papers and television before joining Granada in 1982, where he met his future wife. Since they moved from ITV to their 5pm slot on Channel 4 five years ago, their star has been ever in the ascendant. Guests such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Tony and Cherie Blair and Madonna have been happy to sink into the squashy seats. Earning more than £2m a year, they reach a daily audience of 3m people.

Their marriage is part of the dynamic. They seldom agree about anything, not least the books. For “on-screen chemistry” read bickering. He is forever interrupting her; she is always sighing and looking skywards. She is matronly; he is preternaturally youthful. Indeed, one commentator noted that if Madeley continued to look younger by the day while she looked older, one could soon imagine them “ending up as mother and foetus”.

Whatever their screen appeal, the critics have certainly been silenced. The books chosen are demanding, neither bodice-rippers nor sex-and-shopping. Richard and Judy may have put the show into the book business, but literary standards remain high. Star of the Sea dealt with the Irish famine; Moondust, by Andrew Smith, was a hard and challenging look at the lunar landings. Not every book chosen, however, is guaranteed to have soaraway success. Sales sometimes spike before falling away.

“The book club has nailed the lie that daytime TV is for dimwits,” says Madeley. “There’s usually a lot of misogynistic slander about housewives being stupid, or that we’re watched by people with slipped discs. Our viewers are keen not to be patronised. We are broadcasting to a very bright audience. And the success has enabled us to rebut all the talk of dumbing down.”

When Motion met Ross at a party recently, he told her that the club had “got him reading books he wouldn’t otherwise have done”.

Others appreciate the R&J phenomenon, too. Barnes, for instance, the author of Arthur & George which was shortlisted for the Man Booker last year and was featured on the show last month, is reported as telling one literary agent that being chosen “was one of the highlights of my career”. Win or lose the Man Booker, being picked by R&J is perhaps a prize in its own right.

When the pop star Myleene Klass appeared on their show she met the space scientist Colin Pillinger, the brains behind the Beagle 2 mission to Mars. She was so fired by his passion for cosmology that she bought herself a powerful telescope. She is now studying for a degree in planetary sciences.

The success of the book slot has changed the lives of its presenters, too. “We have a clearer impression of our viewers,” says Finnigan. “It’s given us a better and more direct relationship with them.”

Sometimes too direct. They are now more likely to be accosted by viewers who want to engage in literary debate in Waitrose. “One woman came up to me the other day as we were out shopping and complained,” says Madeley. “She said that her husband had just started one of the recommended books. ‘He hasn’t spoken to me for three nights’.”

Next month the pair will present the televised British Book Awards, dubbed the Nibbies after the pen-shaped prizes. Along with awards for best novel and best newcomer, they will also present the Richard and Judy prize, the best read award. This goes to the favourite of the 16 titles as voted for by viewers.

Finnigan will be wearing black chiffon palazzo pants designed by Maria Grachvogel with a matching fitted top. With any luck there will be no repeat of the famous wardrobe disaster at the National Television Awards in 2000 when her top fell open to reveal the famous Finnigan embonpoint. She will also be borrowing some bling from a Swiss diamond house.

Until then, however, there is plenty more swotting in bed to be done. “We feel we are in the same boat as the readers,” says Finnigan. “The books enrich us all and we are just the messengers.”

“And if we didn’t do the reading we would get found out,” adds Madeley. “You can’t just sit there and say, ‘I’ve had a quick flick through this’. It’s time consuming. I think we have done a good thing to reach, stretch and challenge our viewers. What was it that Nietzsche said? I think it was ‘As a man reaches, so he grows’.” Finnigan nods in agreement.

Madeley quoting Nietzsche’s educational theory? Gulp. All that homework is paying off.