The BBC has finally put This Is Your Life out of its misery, axing the show and its famous red book after nearly 50 years on the air.
"It's never easy to bring such a long running show as This Is Your Life to an end, but I see this more as au revoir than goodbye," said the BBC1 controller, Lorraine Heggessey.
"We want to thank everyone who has worked on making This Is Your Life a successful programme over so many years, from the presenter Michael Aspel to the production teams and, of course, the many people who have been surprised by the red book," Ms Heggessey added.
The writing was on the wall in June when presenter Michael Aspel announced he was leaving the show. At the time the BBC said it was looking at revamping the format with producer Thames, but has decided against because of the collapse in interest both among viewers and guests, who appeared to get younger and younger.
In its heyday, when Eamonn Andrews was presenting the show on ITV, This Is Your Life attracted audiences of up to 20 million viewers.
But the last edition to go out on BBC1, featuring teenage choirboy turned TV presenter Aled Jones, and was shown on Friday August 8 this year was watched by just 3.5 million viewers.
The show has long suffered a dearth in guests - in the mid-1990s when it was threatened with the axe, Thames TV revamped the show bringing lesser celebrities such as Ross Kemp and Maureen from the BBC reality show Driving School.
Younger TV personalities gave the show an added ratings pep but it was not enough to sustain interest.
But This Is Your Life has come back from the dead before, so it could still be too early to write the show off completely.
The show was dropped by the BBC in 1964 after a nine year run that began when its US creator Ralph Edwards handed the very first red book to Andrews, who was to become its longest serving presenter.
But in 1968 Andrews took the show to new ITV company Thames and revived it on the commercial network.
Aspel took over handing out the red books in 1988 following Andrews' death, and stayed with This Is Your Life when it transferred back to BBC1 in 1994.
Over the years, contrary to popular belief, only two subjects refused to appear live on air - England football manager Danny Blanchflower and Doctor in the House author Richard Gordon.
In order to surprise his red book victims, over the years Andrews hid in a sack to surprise Richard Nixon, dressed as an airline steward to catch Shirley Bassey and as an astronaut for Patrick Moore.
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