Soap shooting confession draws 20m

LONDON, England -- More than 20 million people in Britain tuned in to the TV soap "EastEnders" to see the climax of a shooting mystery.

The episode saw actress Lucy Benjamin, who plays Lisa Shaw, confess it was she who shot hardman Phil Mitchell, played by Steve Mc Fadden.

The UK's biggest audience in two years saw the show at its peak when Mitchell rounded on Lucy, his ex-lover, to force a confession that she had shot him.

Three-quarters of all TV viewers -- 76 percent -- saw the key scenes. An average 17.9 million viewers, a 68 percent share of the audience, watched the whole of the show, the BBC said.

Electricity chiefs reported the third largest power surge on record in Britain during the show.

Only the penalty shoot-out between England and Germany in the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup and the climax of "The Thorn Birds" drama in 1984 caused bigger increases in electricity demand.

The dramatic extended episode of the soap ended weeks of guessing in British papers and magazines about the identity of the would-be assassin.

Last night's Barcelona-Liverpool UEFA Cup clash was delayed by 15 minutes so that viewers could tune in to the soap.

Lisa had been the bookmakers favourite and had prompted a huge wave of bets around the UK, making it Britain's biggest TV betting spree since JR was shot in "Dallas" in the early 1980s.

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