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Pointless Celebrities attracts more viewers than England's Euro qualifier against Slovenia

The British public appeared to be more interested in watching the likes of Vanessa Feltz and Carol McGiffin than Wayne Rooney's 100th match

Daisy Wyatt
Monday 17 November 2014 11:47 GMT
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Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osmon host BBC's Pointless
Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osmon host BBC's Pointless (BBC)

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Despite a strong attendance of 82,000 fans at Wembley, more people tuned in to watch Pointless Celebrities than the England match on TV this Saturday.

An average audience of 4.56 million viewers watched England vs Slovenia on ITV, while 4.99 million people chose to watch the celebrity edition of BBC’s Pointless instead.

The British public appeared to be more interested in watching Vanessa Feltz, Penny Smith, Kriss Akabusi, Roger Black, Keith Chegwin, Andrew Castle, Louie Spence and Carol McGiffin than tuning in for Wayne Rooney’s 100th match for England.

Even the peak viewing figures reveal the nation’s apathy towards watching England on the pitch.

Pointless pulled in a high of 7.26 million viewers on Saturday evening, compared with a peak audience of 6.3 million who tuned in to watch England’s Euro qualifier.

The quiz show even managed a respectable gain towards the end of its broadcast at 6.50pm, attracting 6.2 million viewers as people geared up to watch Strictly Come Dancing’s Blackpool special.

Meanwhile, the number of viewers watching England dropped from around 6.1 million to 3.9 million at roughly the same time.

England won the match 3-1 against Slovenia and will next play Scotland in a friendly on Tuesday.

The match could suffer from another ratings embarrassment after being pitted against EastEnders and MasterChef: the professionals in the TV schedule.

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