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image captionRichard Osman is writing two follow-ups to The Thursday Murder Club
Pointless co-host Richard Osman s debut novel The Thursday Murder Club was the UK s best-selling book in the last full week before Christmas.
The murder mystery sold 134,500 copies in the week up to Saturday.
That s more than double the next biggest seller - Barack Obama s memoir A Promised Land, which sold 66,500.
David Walliams, who has been at number one for three of the past four Christmases, is at number three with Code Name Bananas, on 55,000 sales.
Osman s book had the highest sales for a Christmas number one since Jamie Oliver a decade ago, according to The Bookseller, and is the first debut novel to be Christmas number one since current records began in the late 1990s.
Author becomes first debut novelist to score Christmas number one
(PA)
Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club has become the first debut novel to score a Christmas number one.
The Pointless host’s mystery, about a group of pensioners who set about solving the murder of a property developer in a luxury Kent retirement village, beat Barack Obama to the top the festive chart.
The novel sold 134,514 copies in the week ending December 19, according to sales monitor Nielsen BookScan.
Richard Osman (Matt Crossick/PA)
This was more than twice as many as A Promised Land, the first volume of the former US president’s memoirs of his time in office, which sold 66,531.
Richard Osman becomes first debut author to land Christmas No 1 with murder mystery novel
Some 134,514 copies of The Thursday Murder Club were sold in the week ending December 19
22 December 2020 • 8:36pm
It is the first debut novel to top the Christmas book chart since official sales records began in the late 1990s, and the first adult novel to top the Christmas list since Dan Brown s The Lost Symbol in 2009
Credit: Matt Crossick / PA
Richard Osman s The Thursday Murder Club has become the first debut novel to top the Christmas sales charts after selling more than twice as many copies as Barack Obama.
A Promised Land sold 66,531 copies in the week to 19 December, not enough for the former US president to match his wife Michelle Obama’s feat two years ago, when she took the UK’s Christmas crown. The last adult novel to be Christmas No 1 was Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol in 2009.
Osman also beat David Walliams, who has been the No 1 author for three of the last four Christmases. His latest children’s novel, Code Name Bananas, which is set during the second world war, came in third having sold 55,129 copies, while Pinch of Nom food bloggers Kate Allinson and Kay Featherstone’s third cookbook, Quick and Easy, came in fourth.