Romesh, Celebrity Traitors and the licence fee: Mike's Meltdown runs nearly thirty times past usual
Mike Graham's swipe at the BBC through the new Celebrity Traitors line-up drew far more viewers than anything else UKLIVE posted that day, and its comment section filled even faster.
Mike Graham’s UKLIVE - The Home of Common SenseStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 131,969 views a day, 29 times a normal first day on this channel (4,499).
BBC’s Romesh Obsession EXPOSES Why Viewers Are Switching Off
Mike Graham's real target was the BBC, and he came at it through a reality show. In his latest Mike's Meltdown segment, the former Fleet Street journalist and longtime talk radio presenter goes through the line-up for the new Celebrity Traitors, from Romesh Ranganathan and Richard E. Grant to Ross Kemp, Michael Sheen, Miranda Hart, Joe Lycett and Maya Jama. He uses the casting to ask what the corporation spends its money on and whom it is making television for.
The title points at Ranganathan, a familiar face on BBC screens who has hosted the revived Weakest Link on BBC One since 2021. The segment then moves on to talk of AI replacing presenters, falling licence fee income and cuts across BBC journalism. Graham sets all of it against smaller independent broadcasters like his own and makes his case for ending the licence fee and turning the BBC fully commercial.
Sixteen hours after it went up, the video had passed 100,000 views. That puts it on course for nearly thirty times a usual first day for the channel. It drew far more than UKLIVE's other Celebrity Traitors video from the same day, and far more than Liz Truss's sit-down with Matt Goodwin. The comments moved faster still: a typical UKLIVE video gathers a handful in a whole day, and this one had hundreds within hours. Most of them are about the licence fee itself, who still pays it, who has stopped, and whether the BBC should become a subscription service. Ranganathan's place in the schedule is the other running thread.
The channel's daily views have roughly doubled. The BBC was not a one-off topic that morning either. Former health minister Edwina Currie, a guest on the same show, also argued for scrapping the licence fee.
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- Subscribers
- 183,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 280,828 (on a normal day: 134,712)
- Video published
- October 1, 2026
- Video views so far
- 106,868 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 131,969
The numbers
The figures show one segment carrying a whole channel's day, with a comment section far busier than the views alone suggest.
💡 Test your knowledge
Who hosts The Traitors on the BBC, including its Celebrity Traitors spin-off?
Claudia Winkleman has presented the BBC's version of The Traitors since it began in 2022, and she also hosts the celebrity series.
