Warning: This article contains spoilers for this year’s Great British Bake Off final.
Overnight viewing figures for this year’s Great British Bake Off finale have been revealed, and let’s just say, the Channel 4 team definitely has cause for celebration.
At its peak, the Bake Off final pulled in 10.4 million viewers, making it the show’s biggest ever audience on Channel 4.
This year’s emotional Bake Off conclusion saw competitors Peter Sawkins, Laura Adlington and Dave Friday, sweating it out (literally – it was over 35 degrees in that tent) in a bid to be crowned the winner of the 11th series.
In the end, it was Peter who was given the title, becoming the youngest Bake Off champion ever.
While many feared the coronavirus pandemic could mean that there would be no series of Bake Off in 2020, this year’s series was filmed over the summer, with the cast and crew forming a support bubble to ensure everything went ahead safely.
The show eventually launched in September, with consolidated figures revealing 10.8 million had watched the debut episode, making it Channel 4′s highest-rated programme – excluding films – since 1985.
It’s expected that when consolidated figures for the finale are revealed, this record will have been beaten again.
The biggest ever audience in Channel 4’s history remains 13.9m, which was for the mini-series A Woman Of Substance in 1985.
The TV premiere of the film Four Weddings And A Funeral on Channel 4 also attracted an audience of 12.4m in 1995.
Bake Off pulled in its biggest ever audience during its final year on BBC One in 2016, when more than 14 million tuned in to watch Candice Brown’s triumph in the famous tent.