Forget jewels, only fools and horses work in the hunt for the most TV viewers

Long-forgotten programmes from the era when there were only three television channels and when video recorders were an exotic luxury have topped a list of all-time favourites.

Miss World contests, episodes of the Benny Hill Show and Royal Variety Performances hosted by Ken Dodd achieved far higher ratings than more recent, critically acclaimed series such as Jewel in the Crown and Brideshead Revisited.

In fact, only two programmes from the Nineties made it into the top 10, according to a survey compiled by William Phillips, a ratings expert, and published in Television, the journal of the Royal Television Society.

It will come as little consolation to contemporary programmers that one of them, the Christmas 1996 episode of Only Fools and Horses, came top of the list, with 24.35 million viewers.

Industry commentators were yesterday swift to point out, though, that until 1982 Britain had only three channels to choose from, and thus viewers were shared around fewer programmes. The advent of satellite and cable television has further diluted audience share, while videos and computer games now offer strong competition to watching television.

The top 10 most popular programmes in the history of television include three Bond films, broadcast in the early Eighties, and Martin Bashir's interview with Diana, Princess of Wales in 1995, which drew 22.75 million viewers. To The Manor Born, the Seventies sitcom which was for many years the highest-rated programme, made second place.

Programmes that achieved a place in the top 100, which required an audience of at least 19.6 million viewers, include 49 episodes of the soap opera Coronation Street, many of them from long ago, but, surprisingly, none from Eastenders. Comedies such as Last of the Summer Wine and Darling Buds of May also failed to find their way into the top 100.

The journal's report says that one reason for their absence may be that their impact was cumulative, rather than instantaneous.