RAT 5
A canary rotation would be around 8.5-9 hours, not 10, which isn't too far off from an Athens or Istanbul.
easyJet used to do quite a bit of red-eye and still do a little (IST [from BSL], IBZ, etc...).
That in my opinion shows that there are some benefits to not having your whole fleet be idle at night. I'm not talking about having all the aircraft in the fleet out, but looking at LGW you could easily have 2-4 aircraft out of the lot that fly out at night.
Red-eyes do have potential on long routes, just looking at what jetBlue or America West do during the night does make one think it could be pulled off here.
However like you and myself pointed out, the crewing makes such a thing unfeasible. Not only because it's a great way to anger your crew but also because easyJet don't have enough to operate their core business routes.
Also out of interest, would anyone know what the top three bases are on the whole network for profitability and yields.