In the run up to its 10th birthday, BBC 6 Music is celebrating its biggest audience of 1.5 million listeners, The Guardian reports. The digital station, which the corporation tried to axe, had an average of 1.44 million weekly listeners in the final three months of 2011, according to the latest official Rajar audience figures published on Thursday.

There also were new record audiences for its flagship shows presented by Jarvis Cocker, Elbow frontman Guy Garvey, and its weekday afternoon slot presented by one-time Radio 2 pairing Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie.

The station's audience was up a quarter compared with same period in 2010 and it drew more than double the number of listeners it had when BBC director general Mark Thompson announced plans to close it in March of that year.

The threat of the axe prompted a huge protest from listeners and a big rise in its audience; it was later described as the best marketing campaign the station ever had.

With a 1.2% share of the total UK radio audience, 6 Music is now only a whisker behind BBC Radio 3, which has a 1.3% share of the audience. However, Radio 3 had rather more listeners, with an average weekly audience of 2.09 million.