[VMPhil]

Although perhaps understandable due to its long and complex history, it's irked me a little bit that a lot of the reports have gotten the dates of his chat show wrong. So, a brief history:

Paul had filled in for Des O'Connor on ITV's Today with Des and Mel. On the strength of this, he was given his own chat show, weekdays at 5pm from October 2004. This was successful almost immediately, it regularly beat Richard and Judy on Channel 4 in the ratings and the show won a BAFTA in 2005.

After a dispute with ITV when they "forgot" to renew his contract, and wishing for more creative control, the showed moved to Channel 4 in March 2006 and began to be made by his own production company. This continued until 2009 when, unhappy with proposed budget cuts, Paul signed a new deal with ITV and the Channel 4 show ended in December 2009 with a big farewell programme.

Paul's new show for ITV was called Paul O'Grady Live and was broadcast on Friday nights at 9pm but followed a similar set and format to the daytime show. This show is where the clips of Paul ranting against the coalition government come from as I remember watching them go out at the time. Although this show was not a flop, I don't think it was the ratings success either Paul or ITV had hoped for and it only ran for two series in 2010 and 2011.

After a year away, the daytime version of his chat show returned to ITV in November 2013, again at its previous time of 5pm. This ran for three series from 2013-2015. I don't recall any big farewell programme for this version - it seems like he simply stopped doing it.