More men watched Great British Bake Off than football

Fans of The Great British Bake Off will argue that it supplies more moments of anguish, sportsmanship and drama than could be expected for a televised cake competition, which might be why more men chose to tune into Tuesday's installment of the show than to watch Arsenal's Champions League qualifier.

Statistics generated by Attentional and reported by Broadcast Magazine show that of the men watching the two terrestrial shows, just over half decided to catch up with Mary Berry and the baking contestants.

1.72 million men watched Arsenal's Champions League qualifier on ITV1, while 1.92 million tuned in to BBC2. A small difference of four per cent seperated the choice between the two shows.

By contrast, 948,000 women watched the football, 21 per cent of women watching either show, with 3.4 million chosing the BBC culinary contest. The information into the demographics of viewers is generated from TV digiboxes by the reports company.

Tuesday's episode of the show challenged the bakers to make different varieties of bread, a speciality of judge and presenter Paul Hollywood.

A total of 5.32 million viewers saw Tuesday's show, marking the first time any episode of a Great British Bake Off series has beaten the major channels of ITV1 and BBC One with a 23.5 per cent share of the overall audience. These figures were 300,000 viewers down on the previous season opener of the show, a figure which was almost double the first episode of the last series. Such is the success of The Great British Bake Off that Janice Hadlow, BBC Two controller, has admitted that the competition had inspired much "sniffing around" by other BBC executives, perhaps with a view to the show moving to a Saturday night slot.