The outspoken northerner managed to increase his national weekly reach figure in the third quarter results from official radio measurement body Rajar to 6.81m listeners from 6.78m in quarter two this year, and 6.52m during the same period in 2005.
His BBC stablemate Terry Wogan recorded a dip in his listeners, or Terry's Old Geezers or Gals, over on Radio 2.
Period-on-period, Wogan's breakfast show lost 425,000 listeners in the expanding "grey" market, recording a figure of 7.65m down from just over 8m during the second quarter of the year, although the Irish broadcaster still maintained his place as the UK's most-listened-to breakfast host.
The commercial breakfast market took a battering, with most of the high-profile and well-marketed shows taking a hit in weekly reach.
The crucial battle for most listened to breakfast show in London was won by Capital Radio's Johnny Vaughan, but his rivals Jamie Theakston on Heart and Neil Fox on Magic are only a few thousand listeners short of the title.
From the second to third quarter of 2006, the 'Johnny Vaughan Show' dropped 70,000 listeners to a weekly reach of 852,000 in quarter three. This further added to the GCap Media station's woes as the entire station's weekly reach dropped this quarter to 1.46m, down 11% on last quarter and 19% on a year ago.
Heart's Theakston also lost listeners, dropping 52,000 on the second quarter to 768,000 during quarter three.
Former Capital Radio DJ Neil Fox, who defected to Magic in September last year, was another breakfast show presenter whose show took a hit, losing 78,000 listeners to a record a weekly reach of 725,000 this quarter.
In London, Virgin Radio lost 61,000 listeners from the second quarter to the third, with Christian O'Connell's breakfast show dropping to a 519,000 weekly reach.
His replacement on Xfm, Lauren Laverne, also lost weekly reach, dropping 44,000 to 283,000.
Some solace was taken by Nick Ferrari on Chrysalis-owned LBC 97.3 who added 7,000 listeners to his weekly reach, to record 358,000 in the third quarter of the year.
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