1981's TV Top 3
1) Royal Wedding (39m)
2) Jaws (23.9m)
3) Diamonds Are Forever (19.2m) | You'd never get a film topping the TV ratings these days, would you, but 25 years ago video rental had yet to take off. And that Diana was always a dead cert ratings banker. Here she was, showing off her crumpled wedding dress to two thirds of the entire UK population. Diana also topped the TV charts in 1995 with her Panorama interview (22.8m) and in 1997 with, well, you know (19.3m). |
1986's TV Top 3
1) EastEnders (30.1m)
2) Just Good Friends (20.7m)
3) Coronation Street (19.2m) | This was the EastEnders Christmas when Den served Angie with her divorce papers and a depressed Arthur trashed the living room, giving the newly-fledged E20 drama the best soap ratings of all time. Twee comedy was also making its mark, not just with soppy Vince and Penny at number 2 but also, further down the top 10, with Duty Free and Last of the Summer Wine. You can see where UK Gold gets its programming ideas from. |
1991's TV Top 3
1) Coronation Street (20.4m)
2) London's Burning (18.9m)
3) Neighbours (18.8m) | Now here's Corrie back on top, although its most watched episode in this year featured nothing especially memorable ("Betty struggles to cope in the pub without Alec when Bet takes the day off to shop."). And here we are back in the era when Neighbours was inexplicably popular, with daily viewing figures greater than the entire population of Australia. |
1996's TV Top 3
1) Only Fools And Horses (24.3m)
2) Coronation Street (19.8m)
3) Casualty (18.0m) | After fifteen years of dodgy scamming in the Peckham area, this was the Christmas when the Trotters finally struck gold in the form of an antique watch. I was one of the 30 million who decided to give it a miss. And why do people still watch Casualty? It's just social inadequates having freak accidents and getting treated by emotionally incompetent medics, isn't it? |
2001's TV Top 3
1) Only Fools And Horses (21.3m)
2) EastEnders (20.0m)
3) Coronation Street (16.2m) | Five years after supposedly the last ever Only Fools And Horses episode, the BBC dragged the show back to keep Christmas audiences happy. I think I hid in the spare room for the duration. And EastEnders had an audience again, here for the top-rated episode in which Phil Mitchell revealed the identity of the evil minx who'd shot him a month earlier. Back then, strangely enough, the British public actually cared. |
2006's TV Top 3
1) England v Sweden (18.5m)
2) England v Ecuador (16.3m)
3) England v Portugal (16.2m) | We've not had Christmas yet, so this list could change, but oh how telling of modern Britain. We don't come together for comedy any more, or for drama, or even for soap, but we are all transfixed by eleven over-rated male models displaying their football incompetence on the world stage. Maybe if the lads from Coronation Street agreed to play five-a-side against the louts from Albert Square the soaps might stand some hope of a renaissance. But probably not. |
