The Apprentice fails to compete with the Football

ITV1’s World Cup football coverage scored the highest ratings last night and managed to knock Alan Sugar’s new Apprentice off the top spot with almost 9 million peak viewers.

The England V Ukraine qualifier, which saw the home team triumph 2-1 after a winning goal from Chelsea’s John Terry, pulled in more than 7.8 million average viewers and a 33.4% share between 7.30pm and 10.10pm.

Meanwhile, the second episode in the new series ofThe Apprentice on BBC One still managed to achieve highly in terms of ratings, attracting more than 6.6 million peak viewers and a 25.2% average audience share during the all-important 9pm to 10pm slot.

This week’s task saw the two teams set up competing catering services for business professionals in the city – despite a pretty poor attempt from both the girls and the boys, the boys actually managed to lose money, which unsurprisingly appalled Sir Alan.

At the same time, the penultimate Sex Education Show V Pornography, which saw Anna Richardson and a team of sexual health experts travel to a inner-city London school to educate students, pulled in 1.7 million viewers and a 7% share for Channel 4.

BBC Two’s Alan Whicker’s Journey of a Lifetime picked up 1.6 million viewers and a 6.3% average share, while Five’s Extraordinary People: Freak Show Family series continued with less than a million viewers and a low 3.6% share.

Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks and key multi-channel stations.