Millionaire is scraping the bottom of the barrel if that really is tonight's line up! Vorderman and Widdecombe have both been on before. Presumably they've exhausted the list of zelebs willing to go on so are having to start all over from the beginning again (Vorderman was on the first ever celebrity edition).

There will be four couples tonight.

Chris Evans & James Martin
Gok Wan & Carol Vorderman
Ann Widdecombe & David Haye
Mikey North (Gary Windass) & Katy Cavanagh (Julie Carp).

It was meant to be Debbie Rush (Anna Windass) pairing with Mikey North but looks like she couldn't get down to Elstree.

Two games will have the home viewer winning half the money the celebrities win, while all four couple will be playing the clock format.

Chris Evans, Carol Vorderman and Anne Widdecombe have all appeared on the show before.

If DS updates first, several tape-check changes for ITV:

Emmerdale - 19:00 to 19:25 and 20:00 to 20:25
Coronation Street - 20:30 to 20:55
Who Wants to be a Millionaire? - 21:05 to ?

I expect Millionaire to overun quite a bit, so a bit like MPD the end time will be different - well it's 30mins in out of 75mins and their still of the first couple ( out of 4!!). Plus there've got all 2 viewer's calling in comp which will take up a lot of time. So unless the remaining celeb's only have about 1 quesion each it'll be going on till 11!!
God if they all wen't near the £1m question it'' be going in on ill about 12am

Edit : 40 mins in and Ann & David just finsihed - 35mins + 3 more couples = never going to finish in time

Corrie will be out on top tonight im 100% sure of that.

Like last Thursday EastEnders will be down due to the final rush for xmas shopping and seeing as most people have now broken up for work the party season starts now for the younger lot.

Wouldn't be surprised to see corrie over 10m and EastEnders below that.

Friday should see things change though with EastEnders catching up ready for Saturday.

WWTBAM working much better live. Faster pace, more exciting and unpredictable. I reckon they should have some MPD style scheduling and strip it Mon-Sat live in the 9pm slot for 2 weeks every year, providing tonights show proves to be a success.

Also regarding Paul Burling, that's a huge drop off of unsatisfied viewers. I was going to say he should get his own pre watershed series in the same slot as TV Burp when it isn't on, but going by that breakdown, it's looking doubtful. Personally I thought it was an excellent watch, a lot of ITV jokes, but the sort of stuff ITV should be doing.

Quoting myself i know

Well it seems like like it will end on time - as Chris Tarrent just said something along the lines of " will the be able o get in all their questions before he claxon goes - so when will he other celeb's play/ currently playing celebs finish heres' not another Live ep i'm sure

ITV is so much better when its live. Its like tv used to be - unpredictable. It should be 90 minutes though.

The live WWTBAM has at least got people talking on here, so maybe this is where the future should be for this show. Live episodes shown very infrequently (no more than 2 or 3 per year) and 90 minutes long.

It's up against New Tricks though so it'll probably rate no better than around 3-4m.

Tape-checked rating for WWTBAM Live will be 21:05-22:10.

It was really good live, exciting for once. If it rates well tonight, they should do a week of live shows once a year.

Well Live Millionaire was "intresting" to say the least

Thought cutting Gok & Carol's game at £10,000 was weird -you never know they could have got a lot further. Then the 4th couple not even getting to play and just randomly getting £1k.

Surely they would have known that they couldn't not have fit 4 couples in 75mins ( minus ad's) - They couldn't even fit in 3 properly! They should have either just had 2 couples or do a MPD a just extend the show or have had 2 shows.

Was a lot more faced paced though ( even if Chris T looked like he was going to have a heart attack!) and if they tweaked it a little it could refresh the show. I think it would be a good idea to have a week or so of special Live shows someime next year and it could with the right celebs and publicity build momentum over the week and throw in someone that says somethig contrevisal like Frankie Boyle and you'd be onto a ratings winner

Well that was an incredibly short show then. New Tricks was a repeat, so shouldn't really affect it.

Good idea ITV, but next time have it across the week please.

Would've made more sense to strip it across this week.

I reckon Millionaire should always be live. It breathed some life into an otherwise tired format.

And Robbie gets a hard time for under predicting.

Chris about to have a heart attack, Carol's face at finding out her game would be cut short and Chris trying to apologise to the 4th couple was comedy gold..really injected something fresh to the show-something which has failed with the last two attempts to revamp the show. Also Ann looked very, very nervous. You could see her trembling, but good idea to have her as a guest.

It was a good show but why does Tarrant feel the need to shout his way through the programme? That said, can't imagine anybody else presenting it.

He's been presenting for so long he's stuck in that chair.

Bad night all round last night really and I doubt tonight will see much of an improvement at 9pm though the soaps should boost the ratings before that.

WWTBAM was bizarre. What were they thinking? It would impossible to fit in 4 couples, especially as they spent so long with David and Anne waffling between questions filling time - why?! Just very odd.

First thing you would do working on that show is work out how much time to devote to each couple and work out a way of keeping it on time.

I reckon the fourth Millionaire couple were a reserve couple just in case the first three crashed and burned. I do think they should have let Carol and Gok finish their game but it was worth them not letting them just for the priceless look on vile Vordeman's face.

As others have said, if it rated well tonight (and I hope it did) they should do a week of stripped live shows. It was much better than the stale pre-recorded shows but hopefully they won't go into overkill with it.

Judging by the comments above, it sounds like the live Millionaire was an utter shambles, up there perhaps with Brit Awards '89?

I wish I'd tuned in now...

at the idea only 3-4m will have watched when BBC1 mysteriously waved the white flag.

As a bit of an early warning, the Doctor Who Christmas Special is 62 minutes and 4 seconds long. Im sure that will interest a few out there.

The problem was the timing which meant that the last 20 minutes of the show was extremely rushed as Chris Tarrant shouted his way through proceedings to the extent to which a number of people have said he looked like he was going to have a heart attack! The third couple didn't get to finish their game as they ran out of time, whilst the fourth couple didn't even get to start, which meant that Tarrant got into even more of a tizzy as he apologised to the last couple whilst Carol Vordeman (who was part of the couple who didn't finish) sat there with a face like thunder. As you can probably gather, it was quite entertaining.

The show actually worked really well live though and the timing issue could easily be resolved if they do more live episodes (which they should).

In the minority here, but thought the WWTBAM Live thing was shambolic, the 20 second deadline for each question was clearly a MPD rip off, and didn't work IMO. We'll all see in the morning how it worked, it had no competition so should do well regardless.

They had the time limit for the last series of Millionaire and I believe have done it in the US version for a while so is nothing to do with The Million Viewer Drop, a show which really hasn't made as much impact as people on here make it out to have made.

Btw I wasn't having a go at you there, it's just a general comment.

From Attentional:

BBC One
19:00 - The Nativity: 5.1m (22.1%)

BBC Two
21:00 - Being Ronnie Corbett: 2.6m (10.6%)
22:00 - The Two Ronnies: The Studio Recordings: 2.6m (11.1%)

Just realised as today is Christmas Eve I doubt any media websites will update.