Lads top telly ratings

No more shows planned

The BBC's Men Behaving Badly beat off competition from EastEnders and Coronation Street to come top of the Christmas TV ratings.

The Gary and Tony lad extravaganza topped the festive telly charts for the second year running. The lads look set to repeat the feat on Boxing Day and Bank Holiday Monday.

A total of 13.9 million viewers switched on to BBC1 to see if Gary and his long-suffering girlfriend Dorothy manage to start a baby.

The remaining two shows will chart their progress.

Men Behaving Badly, which stars Martin Clunes as Gary and Neil Morrissey as Tony, is about to be consigned to television history, with are no plans to make any more shows.

BBC success

The BBC took the lion's share of viewers on Christmas Day with seven of the Top 10 programmes.

But its overall share of the audience was down from 50% to 45%, while ITV had its best Christmas with 41% of viewers compared to 34% last year.

Bianca had a baby

EastEnders won the battle of the soaps with 13.9 million viewers - the same number as Men Behaving Badly, but with fewer people watching it all the way through.

Coronation Street was third with 13.5 million viewers. An episode of EastEnders in the afternoon was in 8th place with 9.6 million.

Both soaps featured Christmas births with Judy having twins in the Street whilst Bianca had a dramatic delivery in the Queen Vic pub.

Two-thirds of those who watched the Queen's Christmas broadcast saw it on the BBC.

The total viewing figure of 10.4 million was two million down on last year's consolidated figure.

Top 10 Christmas day shows

• Men Behaving Badly (BBC1) - 13.9m

• EastEnders (BBC1) (8.30) - 13.9m

• Coronation Street (ITV) - 13.5m

• They Think It's All Over (BBC1) - 12.1m

• Before They Were Famous (BBC1) - 11.4m

• You've Been Framed (ITV) - 10.7m

• Emmerdale (ITV) - 10.1m

• EastEnders (BBC1) (5.25) - 9.6m

• Aunty's Spanking New Bloomers (BBC1) - 9.1m

• Babe (BBC1) - 8.8m