Hell's Kitchen: drew an audience of 6.6 million
TV managed to turn up the heat under Hell's Kitchen last night when the reality series bubbled over with one of its best ratings performances to date.
A showdown between former Conservative minister Edwina Currie and the famously acerbic Gordon Ramsay which included the immortal put down
"one minute you're shagging the Prime Minister and now you're trying to shag me from behind", brought 6.6 million viewers to the show.
It was Hell's Kitchen's best standalone performance to date. Although the culinary reality show has attracted larger audiences, such as the 8 million who tuned in on Monday night, these have come when ITV has scheduled its big-gun soaps such as Coronation Street immediately beforehand.
Last night's episode did even better than The Bill, which ran in the hour before Hell's Kitchen, pulling in 700,000 more viewers than the long-running police series.
The standoff between Ms Currie and the three-star Michelin chef ensured that ITV won its slot, beating Car Wars on BBC1 and new Channel 4 series Human Mutants.
Car Wars attracted just 4.7 million viewers and a 22% share, while biologist Armand Leroi's attempts to define what it means to look "normal" brought 2 million viewers to Channel 4.
Away from the formulaic glare of reality TV, Bill Oddie brought a surprise audience of 3.1 million to BBC2 with Britain Goes Wild With Bill Oddie. An update from the marathon natural history event at 8pm brought the channel a 15% share and nearly a million more viewers than Channel 4's No Going Back.
gaurdian
) as I saw him drafted into that Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares show for one of the episodes..
