Britain's Got Talent draws biggest audience of series so far

Simon Cowell (right) kissing Amanda Holden during filming of the ITV programme Britain's Got Talent (PA)

Britain's Got Talent drew its biggest audience of the series last night and opened up a gap of 3.5 million viewers over rival The Voice.

ITV's BGT had an average audience of 10.9 million (including viewers of the catch-up +1 channel) to land its series high.

The show was up one million on the equivalent programme last year.

But it was at the expense of BBC1's The Voice, which was 600,000 down on the previous week with an average of 7.4 million for the first battle round of the series.

And it was a colossal drop of almost four million on the first battle round in 2012 which had an audience of 11.2 million.

ITV's five-and-a-half hour FA Cup final coverage had an average audience of five million viewers who saw Wigan's triumph over Manchester City. The audience was down slightly on the 5.5 million who watched in 2012.

PA