The most watched programme on television this past year was the royal wedding, which is hardly surprising, since we had the day off to watch it. Bagehot said that royalty was the institution that ‘riveted’ the nation, by which he meant bound together rather than fascinated. However, strange as it may seem, most people in the UK weren’t sufficiently fascinated, or bound together, to see the ceremony — they were republicans, too young, having a day out, were on the street in London, or just didn’t care. Some 26 million were in front of their sets, only 3 million more than watched in the US, where the coverage started at 6 a.m. East Coast on a normal weekday. The event left us with some lasting, indeed riveting, national images: Pippa Middleton’s bottom and Princess Beatrice’s fascinator come to mind, but it didn’t break any records.
The biggest audiences on British television remain the 30 million who saw EastEnders on Christmas Day 1986, and the largest ever, the 32.3
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