AXED daytime presenters Anne Diamond and Nick Owen looked determinedly ahead and stayed cheery through their last BBC1 morning show yesterday.
There were no lengthy reprises of the four-year programme's achievements or weepy Gaby Roslin-style farewells.
``It may be goodbye but we are not going to look back, we are going to be looking at the future,'' Anne said brightly.
Even an avalanche of emotional farewell messages from distraught faithful viewers could not shake their stiff upper lips.
Good Morning with Anne and Nick has been dropped after four years on BBC daytime television after getting poor ratings against ITV rivals Judy Finnigan and Richard Madeley in the so-called sofa wars.
Last night, Judy and Richard said Good Morning fell behind because it was a ``carbon copy'' of their programme, This Morning.
Judy said: ``We created This Morning from scratch and if you go out to slavishly copy a programme at the same time of day, you are obviously second-comers and you would be very lucky if you won.
``Anne and Nick are talented presenters and have done a very good job but it's not their fault - it's what they were asked to do.''
The final Anne and Nick programme featured the Allo, Allo cast and all the show's experts, including gardener Stephan Buczacki, Ainsley the ebullient chef, and wine expert Oz Clarke, who was suggesting wine for the Millennium celebrations.
Another forward-looking item was a last reunion with the Jones babies, whose progress has been followed by the show.
The show played out with a montage of children helped by the programme's charity efforts in Rwanda and Bosnia.
Anne and Nick first teamed up on TV-am in 1983 and turned the flagging show into a success.
They dreamed up the idea of Good Morning while they were standing in for Richard and Judy in 1989.
Anne and Nick are not married and, much to Anne's indignation, Nick once said: ``Sexual is not a word I would ever use about her.''
Anne's husband Mike Hollingsworth was editor of Good Morning when it was launched, but left in 1994.
The couple have four surviving young sons. Their third child, Sebastian, died of sudden infant death syndrome, prompting Anne's cot death awareness campaign which resulted in new guidelines to young mothers.
When Prime Minister John Major was interviewed by Anne and Nick last April, Anne asked him: ``Do you find it hard to be a full-time father?''
From Monday, BBC1 goes into its summer daytime schedule of children's programmes and classic films and a new daytime schedule is expected to be unveiled in the next few weeks.
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