TV Ratings: May 2

Last night's nailbiting finish to the Embassy world championship, with 150-1 outsider Shaun Murphy emerging victorious in the penultimate frame, helped BBC2's snooker coverage to overshadow the finale of ITV1's Hell's Kitchen.

Murphy's extraordinary victory, the first by a qualifier since Terry Griffiths in 1979, over Matthew Stevens after 34 frames of snooker brought a massive late night audience of nearly 8 million viewers to BBC2, which extended its live coverage beyond the scheduled 10.10pm finish to stay with the action from Sheffield's Crucible theatre.

The BBC2 snooker audience peaked at 7.8 million viewers at 10.45pm, as Murphy sealed his 18 frames to 16 victory, according to unofficial overnights.

At that time BBC2 had a 43% audience share - figures normally only reached by BBC1 and ITV1's flagship soaps EastEnders, Emmerdale and Coronation Street.

Last year's Embassy final, in which Ronnie O'Sullivan had polished off Graeme Dott 18-8 in a one-sided contest by 9pm on the May Day bank holiday, the BBC2 snooker audience peaked at just 4.7 million viewers.

Murphy's last-gasp victory brought immediate comparisons with the classic 1985 Embassy final, in which Dennis Taylor beat Steve Davis with the final black of the final frame.

In pre-multichannel days the 1985 final, which featured in Sunday night's Channel 4 show Britain's Most Watched TV, attracted a massive 18.5 million viewers to BBC2 after midnight for the winning pot.

Overall, the concluding session of yesterday's Embassy world championship final attracted an average of 4.9 million viewers and a 22% audience share between 7pm and 10.55pm.

BBC2's snooker coverage proved more popular than the final of ITV1's Hell's Kitchen, which attracted 4.8 million viewers and a 19% audience share between 9pm and 10.30pm, to see catering boss Terry Miller win.

From 7pm last night the snooker on BBC2 beat everything on rival channels, apart from BBC1's EastEnders and Meet the Parents; and Emmerdale, Coronation Street and Airline on ITV1.

However, both EastEnders and Coronation Street were driven down to unusually low figures, with their ratings no doubt hit by yesterday's warm weather as well as the snooker.

EastEnders was watched by 8.7 million viewers and attracted a 37% audience share from 7.30pm - compared with 9.8 million and 42% last Monday.

Coronation Street at 8.30pm attracted 8.9 million viewers and a 35% audience share - down from 10.2 million and 42% a week ago.

The 7.30pm Monday edition of Coronation Street was also down, from 11.3 million viewers and a 54% audience share last week, to 10.5 million and 49%.

BBC2's snooker coverage also proved a ratings winner yesterday afternoon, when the Murphy-Stevens final was the most popular thing on TV, attracting 2.8 million viewers and a 26% audience share to BBC2 between 2.30pm and 5.35pm.

The snooker gave BBC2's Monday audience share a huge boost, to 18% for the day - nearly double the channel's average.

BBC2 was also snapping at the heels of ITV1 and BBC1 yesterday, with the two most popular channels recording shares of 20.2% and 19.7% respectively.