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Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients (Michael Joseph) has leapfrogged David Walliams’ Bad Dad (HarperCollins) to claim the UK Official Top 50 number one in the latest weekly chart, covering the seven days to end 23rd December. The cookbook sold 81,596 copies for £1.04m—a whopping 38% leap in volume on the previous week, when the celebrity chef was pipped to the Christmas Number One title by 1,600 copies.
This is 5 Ingredients’ seventh week in the top spot, after reigning for six straight weeks across the autumn, and is Oliver’s highest single-week volume since Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals in December 2012.
Bad Dad actually rose in volume by 15% week on week, to 69,890 copies, but came a distant second to 5 Ingredients by nearly 12,000 copies.
With Guinness World Records holding third, Sinclair McKay’s Bletchley Park Brainteasers (Headline) vaulted upwards into fourth place, selling 39,511 copies—a 32% leap week on week and beating out Jeff Kinney’s The Getaway (Puffin) by fewer than 200 copies. Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage (PRH/David Fickling) leapfrogged James Honeybourne and Mark Brownlow’s Blue Planet II (BBC), while Dan Brown’s Origin (Bantam), E L James’ Darker (Arrow) and David Jason’s Only Fools and Stories (Century) filled out the rest of the top 10.
Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (Particular) made a dazzling leap into 11th place, increasing in volume by 59% week on week, with Paul Moran’s Where’s the Unicorn (Michael O'Mara) just 800 copies below in 12th, with 29,023 copies sold.
Lisa Jewell’s Then She Was Gone (Arrow) leapt 14 places to chart above its Richard and Judy Book Club compatriot Jo Nesbo’s The Thirst (Vintage), selling 28,344 copies. The hardback went to the Original Fiction number one in August, so if Jewell can topple E L James from the Mass Market Fiction number one in the coming weeks, Then She Was Gone will have done the double.
Not many books make their debut into the Top 50 the week leading up to Christmas, but this book’s subject is not known for abiding by convention. Robert Sears’ The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump (Canongate) hit 41st place, selling 13,411 copies.
The market has been trailing 2016 for most of the autumn, but last week suddenly kicked into overdrive. In the run-up to 23rd December, 9.6 million books were sold for £86.7m—4.1% up in value on 2016’s week-before-Christmas, and 1.6% up in volume. This is the first time since the start of October that the market has been up in both volume and value year on year, and is the biggest single week in value terms since Christmas 2007.