The final of the Great British Bake Off attracted Channel 4’s second biggest audience ever and its biggest for 32 years.

The latest episode of the baking show, which was won by Sophie Faldo, has been watched by 11 million people since it aired last Tuesday. This includes those who watched it live, via recordings, or through repeats.

The audience means the Bake Off final was the biggest programme on Channel 4 since the 1985 drama series A Woman of Substance.

It also confirms Bake Off as a success for Channel 4 after it paid £75m to bring the programme from the BBC.

The audience for Channel 4 was smaller than the number of people who tuned in for Bake Off on BBC1, with an average of 10.7 million viewers watching each episode in last year’s series.

However, Channel 4 executives expected this and budgeted to break even with the show at about 3.5 million viewers per episode, with income coming from advertisers and sponsors.

Bake Off ended up smashing this target, despite the final nearly beingovershadowed by the judge Prue Leith after she named the winner on Twitter hours before the show was due to be broadcast.

Bake Off has also been the most popular series among young audiences on TV in Britain so far this year. It averaged 2.6m 16- to 34-year-olds per episode.

However, it is almost certain to be overtaken by Blue Planet II, the BBC’s new wildlife series.

The first episode of Blue Planet II was watched by 14.1 million people. This consolidated audience made it not only the most watched programme of the year but the third most watched of the past five years, behind only the football World Cup final in 2014 and last year’s Great British Bake Off final.