Judith Keppel, one of the long-running stars of the Channel 5 gameshow Eggheads, has announced her retirement from the programme.
Announcing her decision to leave the show, Keppel said in a statement to PA (via Metro): "I love doing it, but I have done it for 19 years and my memory is definitely not what it was.
"I have done it for 19 years and I’m quite old. I had a sort of horrible decade birthday the other day, and I have noticed that I can’t learn as well as I did. So I just thought it was time to go."
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Keppel went on to praise her fellow co-panelists, saying: "Because it’s a game, we all get on very well.
"I love all the behind-the-scenes stuff, and make-up and wardrobe and all that. I mean, it’s just great fun, the whole thing, it’s been great fun."
The TV personality rose to fame after becoming the first person to win Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2000. She would later join Eggheads, which sees contestants team up against a panel of quiz show champions in the hopes of winning money, in 2003.
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Reflecting on her time as an Egghead, Keppel added that she'll miss the concentration skills which are required to keep up with the show's general knowledge requirements.
"I think what I'll funnily enough miss is having to concentrate, because it was very good for me in that I started reading the papers, concentrating hard," she added. "Now, of course, I cast away any sports pages there are – don’t have to do that, don’t have to read about pop music or anything like that.
"So I’m going to get very out of touch with kind of popular stuff, I think. And I probably won’t concentrate like I used to."
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Brenna Cooper is a freelance journalist, who currently specialises in entertainment reporting. She joined Digital Spy in 2022, writing TV and movies stories for the site. After graduating with an NCTJ accredited Journalism Masters from the University of Sheffield in 2020 she has since embarked on a freelance career.
Brenna previously produced lifestyle content for Checklists.co.uk and has a specific interest in music, reviewing live acts and interviewing bands such as Confidence Man and Amyl and the Sniffers.
