According to the BBC’s Lizo Mzimba, last night’s Match of the Day was watched by 2.58 million TV viewers on BBC One. Up nearly half a million on last Saturday’s figure of 2.09 million according to the BARB overnights. This was the show’s biggest audience this year.

An impressive audience increase of 23.4% for the new format platitude and cliché free version of Match of the Day. Political fans of Lineker are claiming that this it is due to rubber-necking, Guido’s pretty certain that they would have been making a very different claim if the #BoycottMOTD campaign had succeeded. Football without punditry could be the future. Would save TV licence fee payers millions…

As recently as the end of March official ratings agency BARB’s figures show that All Out Politics was getting over quarter of a million viewers. This Wednesday the show got less than 60,000 viewers… this explains much.