Boosted by its love triangle storyline, The Archers was listened to online nearly a million times in October, the highest ever for a BBC radio programme.

With 988,722 listens in October, The Archers was way ahead of the second placed show, Radio 1's Chris Moyles, with 547,077; and Radio 4's The Afternoon Play, in third place, on 328,988.

The long-running Radio 4 soap beat its own online record set in May this year of just over 750,000 listens.

Radio 4 also topped the BBC weekly podcast chart, with Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time - downloaded almost 600,000 times in the month - beating Chris Moyles to the number one spot.

The Radio 4 website had 1.8 million visitors in October.

Overall, the BBC had a record 13 million on-demand listening requests via the BBC Radio Player, and 5.9 million podcasts were downloaded - another record.

The Ruth Archer plotline, in which she was tempted to betray her husband of 18 years, ran for several months and climaxed during the programme's 15,000th episode on November 7.

Or rather it reached an anticlimax, after Ruth decided against a night of passion with herdsman Sam Batton.

The build-up to her big decision helped boost the online audience for The Archers, which has topped the BBC's online radio chart for the 23rd month running.

Not all Archers fans were happy with the plot, though, inundating the show with the complaints that Ruth's actions were out of character.

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