'Pop Idol' was best ITV ratings win for years

Almost 14 million viewers tuned into Pop Idol's epic final, giving ITV its most successful Saturday evening for two years, unofficial overnight figures revealed yesterday.

At its height, the showdown between Gareth Gates, 17, and Will Young, 23, a politics graduate, was watched by 13.9 million viewers, more than 59 per cent of the viewing public.

Television chiefs denied the voting had been rigged or even distorted by the enormous surge of interest. About 8.7 million telephone voters had their say, with Young winning by 500,000 votes.

Richard Holloway, executive producer for Thames Television, which made the programme, said: "We are totally confident that the voting on Saturday night's grand final was fair and unbiased, and that Will won fair and square."

Telescope, the independent company that operated the telephone lines, said: "All voteline numbers are routed to the same bank of lines, ensuring that there is no bias. On mass response projects such as Pop Idol, it is impossible to distort the result."

Although the traffic volumes on the network were enormous, British Telecom reported no major faults on the line, the spokesman added.

The series was a triumph for ITV, which took a battering last year over its disastrous scheduling of football in the early Saturday evening slot. Jubilant executives yesterday pointed out the BBC slumped on Saturday night with only 3.4 million people tuning into the Generation Game while the Pop Idol finalists were performing for the last time before voting closed.

Pop Idol helped the digital channel ITV2 to break through the two million barrier for the first time. The show also performed better than Popstars, the last attempt to manufacture pop success. The episode that revealed the winning line-up for the band Hear'Say won 42.6 per cent of the audience. Hear'Say has already suffered a slump in popularity and the surprise departure of one of its members, Kym Marsh.

Young's first single, a double A-side of "Evergreen" and "Anything Is Possible", is due out on 25 February. Emma Jones, editor of Smash Hits magazine, warned Young he would have to learn lessons from Hear'Say. She said: "He will have to prove himself twice over as a credible pop star in his own right and not just a winner of a TV show."