The BBC is well and truly in the video-on-demand business now, and it seems that business is a boomin'.

The BBC iPlayer monthly performance pack has just been released and shows how Auntie cleaned up at Christmas, breaking records left, right and centre.

There was a total of 145 million requests for TV and radio programmes on the iPlayer in December 2010, the third month in a row that the VOD service broke its total number of requests record. Year-on-year, this was an increase of 27 per cent.

Of this 145 million, requests for TV programmes were at an all time high of 89.7 million with BBC iPlayer on Virgin Media seeing a new record of 23.9 million requests received and requests for programmes via the PS3 reaching 7 million, which is an increase of 31 per cent month-on-month.

Two Top Gear Specials (Middle East and USA) topped the most popular TV charts with over 1.25 million requests each, although iPlayer fans showed no sign of good taste as the God-awful Come Fly With Me entered the charts at number 5 with 783,000 requests.

"These figures are a fantastic way to start the new year and I'm looking forward to building on these while we continue to evolve and improve BBC iPlayer", said Daniel Danker, BBC's general manager for programmes and on-demand.

"In December we saw huge growth of BBC iPlayer on game consoles, connected TVs, and mobiles phones. We're seeing impressive audience appreciation for our TV and mobile experiences, and I anticipate that growth on these devices will significantly outpace traditional BBC iPlayer use in 2011".

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