Top of the pops

The most watched programme on British television this year was the special live edition of EastEnders, broadcast in February to mark the soap’s 25th anniversary.

The most watched programme on British television this year was the special live edition of EastEnders, broadcast in February to mark the soap’s 25th anniversary. This was the one — I assume you’re keeping up — in which Bradley Branning plunged to his death and Stacey confessed that she had killed Archie. At the end, some 16.6 million people were watching, which is roughly 28 per cent of the population, still a fraction of the 50 per cent who watched the old Morecambe and Wise show on Christmas Day back in the 1970s.

But television is no longer the glue that binds us. The Americans call them ‘water-cooler moments’, though in Britain the conversations would be in the canteen — over The Forsyte Saga or Hancock’s Half Hour, or, of course, Coronation Street.