Rugby eats into BBC's Friday night comedy audience

The Rugby World Cup spoilt the debut of BBC1's new Friday night comedy line up. France's shock 17-12 defeat by Argentina was watched towards the end of the match by 4.5 million viewers - this was whilst BBC1 was unveiling A Bucket O' French and Saunders and the new series of Not Going Out on the other side.

Although ITV took a good share of the audience, the French and Saunders 'highlights' show still managed to attract 3.8 million viewers and the new series of Not Going Out started with a respectable 3.3 million viewers (which is a rise on the 2.8 million who watched the very first episode of the sitcom last year).

The rugby was no match for the BBC's most popular modern sitcom though - a repeated episode of My Family which was broadcast on BBC1 during the pre-match warm up time of 7:30pm to 8pm was seen by 5.9 million viewers.

Later, during the weekend, Ant and Dec proved their worth to ITV once again - the new series of Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway reached a high of 6.9 million viewers.

On Sunday BBC1's one-off comedy drama The Dinner Party served up an un-expected ratings boost for the corporation - the hour-long show, which starred Alison Steadman, began with 7.4 million viewers. Although the drama dropped down to 6.7m viewers for the last fifteen minutes, the ratings were still considerably above the channel's 4.8 million average for the slot.