Richard's anger at 'drunk Judy' pictures

RICHARD Madeley has hit out at claims that pictures of his wife and former TV co-host Judy Finnigan looking bleary-eyed were evidence that she had a drink problem.

The photographs showed Finnigan, 61, being supported by her husband and daughter Chloe after leaving a cafe near their home in London last week. Reports said Finnigan had to be helped because she had been drinking.

Yesterday Madeley, 53, said: "This is a deeply unpleasant allegation and utterly untrue. As a family, we are all very angry and upset about it, and almost at the end of our tether."

He said the star was recovering from both knee and eye surgery and that was why she needed help and appeared bleary-eyed.

The former stars of ITV's This Morning had just taken their daughter to Cafe Rouge in Hampstead, north London.

Madeley said: "Judy and I took Chloe for a perfectly respectable impromptu thank-you family lunch on Tuesday. She had spent the morning teaching her mother how to use a new laptop, on which Judy is writing her first novel.

"After steak and fries, during which Judy had just a glass and a half of wine, we had left for a bookshop opposite when two photographers appeared and took multiple snaps of the three of us crossing the road.

"We walked with linked arms, as families do. Judy has ruptured the anterior cruciate ligaments in both her knees, and, like most people with this condition, appreciates an arm or rail going up or down steps or kerbs. Crude comments were also written about her eyes. Judy is recovering from not one, but two, operations in recent weeks on her right eye."

Madeley added: "It is ridiculous that such private matters should have to be divulged in order to quash lazy, stupid and cruel reports about my wife.

"Judy is an exceptionally wise and forgiving lady, but even she has had just about enough of it. It has got to stop."