models limited to the case of zero or vanishing eccentricity and obliquity such as in the models of e.g. @GS66, @JGB08 and @FRH08.

Following @BLM01 and @GLB03, attempts have been made to explain the observed large radius of some transiting close-in gas giant exoplanets - the so-called “Hot Jupiters” - by means of tidal heating [@JGB08; @MFJ09; @ISB09]. All these models, however, use tidal models truncated to low (second) order in eccentricity, in spite of initial eccentricities, as determined from the tidal evolution calculations, which can be as large as $e=0.8$! According to these calculations, a large eccentricity can remain long enough to lead to tidal energy dissipation in the planet’s gaseous envelop (assuming a proper dissipation mechanism is at play in the deep convective layers) at a late epoch and then can explain the actual bloated radius of some observed planets.

In the present paper, we revisit the viability of this tidal heating hypothesis, using an extended version of the @Hut81 tidal evolution model, solving consistently the [*complete*]{} tidal equations, to any order in eccentricity and obliquity, and coupling these latter with the gravothermal evolution of the irradiated planet. As will be shown in the paper, properly taking into 