Davidson trounces Premeriship in ratings

Jim Davidson proved more popular than Premiership football this weekend.

A repeat of his 40-minute stand-up show Close To The Edge attracted 3.2million viewers to BBC1 on Saturday night.

The ratings were 500,000 higher than that for the London derby Spurs v Chelsea on ITV1's The Premiership.

Davidson's figures also contrast with Graham Norton's swan song for Channel 4.

He bowed out on Friday night with just 1.3 million viewers ­ or 7 per cent of the viewing population.

The ten-part series, broadcast from New York, was the comic's last before moving to BBC1 to develop new prime-time programming for Saturday nights; ironically once the domain of Davidson.

Published: 5 Apr 2004