The Gardeners' World Blog

Viewing figures are now in for the FA Cup Final. I was in Cardiff and it was by far the best Final I've seen - so credit to both teams.

I'd like to think that being entertaining, even if you lose as West Ham did, means the event lives vastly longer in people's memories. And the early indications are that audience appreciation seems to have been very high.

We started at 3pm with 6.8m viewers - 57% of people viewing TV at that time. By 4 o'clock the number had risen to 8.2m (60% of the total viewing audience); and at 5pm it went over the 10m mark, making it the most-viewed sport event of 2006.

Then for the penalty shoot-out we had 11.3m viewers - a 65% share of the market. In other words every other channel and service in the UK was competing for the remaining 35% of viewers. It was the second highest FA Cup audience of this decade.

And if you like statistics, as you can tell I do, and want to compare with recent finals...