Ananova:

Viewing figures for Big Brother are growing and the website which accompanies the Channel 4 series is scoring millions of hits per day.

As the race for the £70,000 cash prize hots up, almost 1.5 million viewers cast their votes when given the choice of evicting Scouser Craig or newcomer Claire.

The latter was eventually given the boot from the house after receiving 79 per cent of the votes - 1,150,176 people calling for her removal. Craig registered 21 per cent, a total of 313,094 votes.

The voting totals were last matched when Caroline was evicted, a Big Brother spokesman said.

An unphased Claire said simply "Hi Mum!" when she was given the bad news as the housemates shared a warm jacuzzi.

Big Brother's new 10pm slot has drawn an average audience of 5.6 million through the week, with Wednesday's 10pm show averaging 6.4 million, a 32 per cent share of the audience.

It was the second highest rating show since "Nasty" Nick's eviction on Friday, August 18, which drew 6.9 million viewers - 30 per cent of the viewing audience. Last night's programmes peaked at 5.3 million viewers, claiming a 37 per cent audience share.

Big Brother is continuing to attract a very broad, young audience, with 60 per cent of viewers aged under 34, and the show has slightly more appeal to females, with 57 per cent female viewers.

Hits on the Big Brother website, which had averaged around 2.4 million per day, reached an all time high and trebled when Nick was evicted.

Since then, the number of hits has reached a new average at three million hits per day. This places the Big Brother website well ahead of the top 50 UK websites.