Quite why the producer felt it necessary to inflict this on the viewer is difficult to fathom, but its deeply disturbing nature was written all over John Leslie’s face – quite patently, his mugging up of the “Oh dear, you’ve really gone and embarrassed yourself this time, Fern” routine required no acting whatsoever. (David Essex: “She’s obviously a natural mover … She’s got lots of things moving.”) It’s indicative of the “Oh well, nobody’s really watching anyway, they’re just waiting to turn over for Bargain Hunt while they iron the cat” attitude which has so obviously rotted this tired old format-coffin to its core. I’ve seen some barrel-scraping ideas, but I have to admit: “Fern, get your tits out” was a strategy that boggled even me. Expect John Leslie’s home photography circa 1993 to be worrying Michael Douglas’ lawyers very soon if this carries on (“So, Raj, what would Freud make of this one, eh?”)

Basically they’ve tried freshening up the format, in a rather pathetic “deodorant on a dead horse” kind of way; each of their famous panel of “experts” now gets their own day of the week. Monday is Joanna’s “Carnival of Obesity”, more of which anon. Tuesday is Dr Chris Steele (“Ask your GP about the possibility of reducing the dose, or have you perhaps considered exorcism?”), followed on Wednesday by psychiatrist Dr Raj Persaud (“It should only interfere with your relationship if your mother minds him wearing them”). Bringing up the rear on Thursday is wobbly-bodied, hand-wringing, squinty-eyed “Duurnt give up huurp, love” agony aunt Denise, and then a sublime week’s viewing is capped by some generic, cliché-dictionary, camp hairdresser/gardener/whatever he is.

“Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey are here!” exclaims a now mercifully de-corsetted Fern. Naturally I took this to be some sort of sick joke – “But don’t worry, Security will have them removed! If not that, then Paraquat should do it …” – but sadly, no. There they were, the entertainment media equivalent of Foot-and-Mouth disease, “chatting” to each other ‘midst the pot plants and MDF. Their “interview” was just as bumsquirmingly awful as you might expect. “I’ve got three lovely girls from my first marriage, so I’ve been very lucky in that respect”, smarmed the delectable Bovey; quite a beautiful way to begin a discussion of infertility with your childless second wife sat grimly at your side. I know the brain cannot compute “felt sorry for” and “Anthea Turner” in the same sentence, but for a fleeting moment, it was so. “Even though Anthea can’t conceive”, he intimated in his most compassionate tones, “no doctor on Earth can tell us why!” (Well, there’s five million people currently coming up with some cracking theories, you insidious Brylcreemed tit.) Sadly, Dr Madeley has now long since left the building, so we were spared what would have been a priceless attempt at cod fertility analysis (“Ah, well, no, it’s your womb, you see. See, Judy’s womb, that’s been a real bummer …”)

No less painful was the aforementioned fitness guru Joanna, as emaciated and over-makeupped as these lifestyle Fundamentalists always are. Two poor women called Donna and Nicky were vying for the dubious honour of a “DietCam” installed in their homes; presumably so Joanna can spend her weekends snorting Jaffa Cake crumbs all over the editing suite whilst compiling the highlights. “Dropping under 18 stone is a great psychological hurdle, isn’t it Donna?” she smarmed. (Translation: “Now you only weigh the equivalent of a small horse!”) It got worse, though. To add weight (snigger) to this “DietCam” business, a celebrity victim was needed: Hey, its Brummie Alison from Big Brother! Now you too can watch her hoover up the West Midlands every Monday morning.

David Essex looked like the nurse had wheeled him on under the medicine trolley. To say he appeared “a bit old” would be like saying Christine Hamilton is “a bit annoying”: he looked like an gypsy-earringed Transylvanian corpse doing an impression of a faded ’70′s pop star. Plugging his book, plugging his new album, plugging his trawl of every WH Smith’s from Clacton to Aberystwyth – did Pebble Mill not die with Judi Spiers? (“Yes, I’m in Me and My Girl with Su Pollard at the Birmingham Hippodrome, firebombs permitting.”) This really is like TV stuck in East Anglia, circa 1983; right down to the pastel sofas. Why on earth don’t they just admit that the format is like rigor mortis? What’s wrong with just bunging a mélange of crap at the viewer, à la BBC1? It brought us the Thin Orange Duke, don’t forget (now resplendent for a full – live! – hour in the mornings, as well as primetime.)

Truth is, R&J fans, though Fern and John do a pretty commendable job (as long as she keeps her assets to herself), their predecessor’s lack of professionalism had long since turned This Morning into a tatty, tiresome, amateurish mess. I can only sympathise with the 77% of people who phoned in to tell Denise they were “close to a nervous breakdown”. They, too, must have seen the face of the abyss shimmering back at them in Grant Bovey’s fake tan.

The programme began with a Family Fortunes spoof. Richard and Judy led opposing teams of This Morning experts, noisily quarrelling over the funniest and most unusual moments from the show’s history while Les Dennis, present only on a screen, tried to keep order. Competitive environments have always brought out the worst in Richard; sure enough his combative traits soon tumbled forth as he ordered his team about and – as usual – interrupted his wife. The teams cited clips, but we didn’t actually get to see them: hugely frustrating, as making do with personnel hazily reminiscing about “that transsexual makeover” didn’t make for good telly. The whole business overran thanks to Richard getting carried away recalling a recent experiment with lubricants. “Yes, the clitoris cream” announced Richard firmly. “The what cream?” mugged Les. Next was “The testes self-examination,” explained Richard. “The testing self-examination” repeated Les wrongly. “You’re not supposed to confer – but I don’t care,” he sighed. This highly unsatisfactory knockabout concluded with the first of many tributes: “Mornings are never going to be the same without you,” croaked Les, “we’ll all have to get jobs!”

After the news Richard and Judy were snugly back in their normal domain, proudly seated in front of the Thames. As expected – and hoped for – they talked over each other within seconds. “Welcome back …” “Hello …” “Sorry …” “Sorry …” A sense of the pair ditching subtle interplay and going flat out for complete abandonment of poise and timing was overwhelming.

To qualify for the famous Midday Money quiz viewers had to identify a clip from The Woodentops. Once the footage was aired, it wasn’t enough for the pair to simply explain the question. “They were so posh!” snapped Richard, while Judy claimed to have loved the series as a child – “A really pretty house with a really pretty garden.” “And an inside toilet – which you didn’t have,” reminded Richard. He then revealed that just under £3m had been given away since Midday Money began – which begged the response no wonder ONdigital is in trouble. “It’s also the 2635th episode,” he droned on, “although we haven’t actually done 2635 …” “All right Richard, you can get back in the corner with your calculator,” purred Judy. Richard responded with a look of hurt tinged with malice, then threw Judy with a sudden “What was that?” directed to the gallery.

A suitably bombastic competition unfolded during the programme: the semi-final of “Win the This Morning House”. The fact it wasn’t the actual final was a bit of an anti-climax, especially as Richard so loved swivelling his leather chair. “Let’s go through the keyhole …” he cracked. Each time the programme went live to a semi-finalist’s house there was a two-second time delay that meant one of the contestants kept shouting “Hello Judy” at the camera relentlessly. Not for the last time Richard stoically reminded viewers, “It’s not THE last show, it’s just OUR last show!”

Meanwhile there was major trouble brewing. Judy announced that people were misdialing the number for the phone-in and calling what she seemed to imply was a real hospital. “They’re saying patients could actually die”, she gasped. But as has been so often the case, This Morning had to immediately flip from one emotional extreme to the other. Des O’Connor loomed into vision to promote his archive compilation show The Way They Were. He described a clip in painstakingly detail – only for Judy to introduce the exact footage in question, leaving Des looking stumped.

We then saw a very young looking Anne Robinson on What The Papers Say. “I used to be a researcher on that show,” Judy mused, off into another haze of yesteryear, “but I don’t remember Anne Robinson.” “They had guest presenters didn’t they?” pondered Richard. “A different one every week” added Judy pointlessly. Des tried to carry on plugging but of course it was no good. “I’ve got a fly buzzing round my head” muttered Richard, and the whole interview was killed. “Can we see Emma Bunton please?” Judy asked the gallery out loud. Finally Des’ childhood anecdotes sent Judy into a reverie: “When you look back, does it just seem like another world?” she waxed, perhaps already thinking of her own future.

This Morning has stubbornly felt on the edge of minor chaos for years, with items rushed, ended too quickly or simply dropped. This finale was no exception – indeed, even less effort than usual seemed to have been put into organising a workable running order. To give the show some kind of “historic” feel, a world record had been cooked up for them to break: to attempt a makeover of 100 people in 100 minutes. The brevity of this and other features meant it was terribly hard to gauge exactly what was going on, though a representative from the Guinness Book of Records implied it was for real.

Then it was a sudden cut to an interview with two young Emmerdale cast members, and both Richard and Judy pressed ahead asking them questions in character. When Richard then posed a question of the female star herself, and she still answered in character, he quacked, “No no, the real you!”, before drawling horribly, “She’s very pretty.” Judy wanted the cast members’ on-screen relationship to be a success: “Is this going to work out nice and happy?” You felt this was a matter of urgency.

The cookery feature involved Boy George promoting his macrobiotic recipe book. Richard pushed a tea towel into his face. “I can’t believe you’re a good enough cook to write this!” flapped Judy stupidly. Richard continued, “You’ve never cooked before have you?” George responded: “Yes I have – on your show.” A co-helper was present who wasn’t properly introduced, though Richard approached her: “Where are you from – Yugoslavia? They’re all bossy out there.” Paul O’Grady wandered in and Richard gave him a big kiss. The “This Morning House” competition was settled, but the losing contestant went to pieces. Richard tried his best to cheer her up: “You’ve won a holiday!” but Judy looked very distressed by it all – “I hate that, I hate that.”

And so it rolled on. Paul O’Grady, something of a This Morning regular, began, “It’s really odd that you’re going,” then got carried away – which Richard was clearly hoping would happen. “I’ve had a ball – such a good time on this show … We’re taking over tomorrow – me and Cilla.” When he tried to talk about his new series on location in America Richard as ever had to upstage him. “We love the States – we’re completely pro-American,” he announced, then offered his opinion of the entire nation and its history: “They are very rule-bound, seeing as it’s supposed to be the land of the free.” Paul made a dig at the media industry – “What they know about telly they can write on an ant’s thumb”, which Richard laughed at a bit too loudly.

Taking comfort in numbers the whole team assembled for “our last phone-in!” The callers were all classic This Morning vintage: the usual ill-chosen mix of froth – a woman who was also called Lily Savage – and the downbeat. Someone came on the line who first rang in five years ago contemplating suicide, but on agony aunt Denise and Judy’s advice had discovered it was only post-natal depression – and, as Richard explained, “Because Judy’s had that, she was able to help you!” thereby providing a swift reminder of This Morning‘s justification for its existence. Inevitably one of the callers was a celebrity. “Thank you for coming the other night,” George Michael began. He paid tribute – “You will be sorely missed in this household,” but then demanded, “What time is the show you’re not allowed to talk about?” Richard, squirming with relish, countered, “We honestly can’t talk about it,” but it will be on “later in the day.” “Faith was written in your honour,” Richard joked to Denise. “Oh shut up” shouted Judy, fed up with Paul’s teasing. “She started at half seven”, countered Paul as Denise, champagne glass in hand, thrust herself all over him.

Time was almost up. A suitably ill-kempt round of Midday Money was dispatched, the caller bagging £11,000 from piss-easy questions, most of which Richard gave the answers to. Then the result of the world record attempt provided the programme with the climax it deserved. “Are we live from the makeover site?” snapped Richard. No. He panicked. The live link was down – or was it? There was total confusion. “John Scott can you hear us?” he pleaded. Richard barked out orders – and finally the link was restored, and John displayed the re-made 100 though there didn’t appear to be any discernable difference from how they looked earlier. The Guinness woman confirmed that the world record for “The largest televised makeover” had been set by This Morning, which seemed somehow very appropriate. “I’m speaking for the whole nation,” John then continued, “We love you, we’re gonna miss you so much. I give you a tribute to the wonderful Richard and Judy.” And at last, some clips arrived.

With the twilight of the programme now at hand, back in the studio Judy was weeping buckets and clutched her mangy tissue tightly. Richard, on the other hand, was very cool and calm. “Let’s say something to the viewers here,” he began. At this point, only the coldest of cynics could not fail to have been moved by the occasion. Richard’s stirring monologue quoted the man who he and Judy had effectively stabbed in the back, ITV chief David Liddiment: “This isn’t our show, it’s yours – and we’ve always kept that at the forefront of our minds.” Choking on his words, he handed over to Judy who squeaked “We’ve loved you all very much.” But once more the pair had to desperately remind us that, “It’s not THE last show, it’s just OUR last show.” There is another This Morning tomorrow. But after that? “Have we nearly finished?” asked Judy, confused. They made their final curtain call: “As they say, we’ll see you around.” Then one last shot of the studio showed everyone milling around, dazed, unreal: even at the end, This Morning mirroring reality, their audience: us.