O'Grady closes in on Robinson at teatime

Paul O'Grady is giving Anne Robinson a run for her money in the battle for teatime viewers.

According to overnight ratings figures, yesterday's episode of The Paul O'Grady show pulled in an average of 2.57 million viewers - a 20% share of the audience - in the 5pm hour, a week-on-week rise of around 400,000 viewers.

It was narrowly beaten by BBC Two's The Weakest Link, which had 2.66 million (19.6%) between 5.15pm and 6pm, but convincingly beat C4's Richard & Judy, with 1.26 million (9.9%).

Later, Coronation Street topped the ratings tree with audiences of 11.62 million (52.5%) and 10.59 million (42.5%) for its 7.30pm and 8.30pm episodes respectively. EastEnders took third with 10.28 million (43.7%), with Emmerdale following on 9.25 million (46.1%).

At 9pm, Waking The Dead averaged 6.44 million (26.7%) across the hour for BBC One, while on ITV1, Rose and Maloney held 5.27 million (22.9%) through 10.30pm.

Channel 4 kept 2.99 million (12.4%) for Wife Swap but fared less well at 8pm with Monarchy by David Starkey, drawing an audience of 1.36 million (5.6%).

Elsewhere, the first part of Martin Scorsese's acclaimed profile, Arena: No Direction Home - Bob Dylan, averaged 1.79 million (8.3%) for BBC Two between 9pm and 10.55pm.

A new episode of Hell's Kitchen USA hit the spot in multichannel homes, pulling in 532,000 (3.2%) for ITV2 in the 9pm hour. It narrowly beat Sky One's documentary Inside Britain's Fattest Man, which had 485,000 (2.9%) over the same period.

Other strong performers included Living TV's Grey's Anatomy (210,000, 1.6%), BBC Four's Spike Milligan: I Told You I Was Ill - A Live Tribute (202,000, 1.2%) and Sky One's Cruise with Stelios (193,000, 1.2%).