The Clever Guts Diet smarts its way into the top spot

Michael Mosley and Tanya Borowski’s The Clever Guts Diet (Short) has bowel’d into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 19,302 copies for £101,156 according to Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market, and denying Paula Hawkins’ Into the Water (Doubleday) a third week at the top. Serialised by the Daily Mail, The Clever Guts Diet has chalked up Mosley’s best first week ever, beating 2013’s The Fast Diet (Short) with Mimi Spencer, which went on to sell 580,133 copies, and 2016’s The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet (Short), which has sold 316,315 copies. It is the first small publishers title—from publishers earning £5m or less through the TCM in the previous calendar year— to go to number one since Jane Hawking's Travelling to Infinity (Alma) in May 2015.

This could push the gut health mini trend, brought into the world by Giulia Enders’ Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-Rated Organ (Scribe), which has sold 123,897 copies since 2015, into the mainstream. Jeanette Hyde’s The Gut Makeover (Quercus), Dr Josh Axe’s Eat Dirt (Bluebird) and Emma Hatcher’s The FODMAP Friendly Kitchen Cookbook (Yellow Kite) have all had modest success since Enders blazed the trail. Maybe next January’s New Year, New You crop will be more intestine-intensive as a result of The Clever Guts Diet's success.

With Shari Lapena’s The Couple Next Door (Corgi) holding firm in second place, Hawkins’ second psychological thriller fell to third place. Lapena's debut also spent a third week running atop the Mass Market Fiction top 20. Lee Child’s Night School (Bantam) made it a Transworld top two, but Jeffrey Archer’s This was a Man (Pan) snuck into third, taking fifth place overall with 13,483 copies sold.

Into the Water splashed into a third week at Original Fiction number one, the chart’s longest running bestseller since Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent (Profile) in December 2016. Its trade paperback continued to post surprisingly strong sales, but slipped to fourth in the wake of new entries Peter James’ Need You Dead (Macmillan) and Child’s short story collection No Middle Name (Bantam).

The Clever Guts Diet ran away with the Paperback Non-Fiction number one, for Mosley's 22nd week, with The Hairy Bikers scoring second with new entry The Hairy Dieters Go Veggie (Orion). In Hardback Non-Fiction, Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (Particular) clenched the number one for a fourth week running, while Henry Marsh’s Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) carved its way into second place.

Liz Pichon’s Family, Friends and Furry Creatures (Scholastic) continued to reign over the Children’s chart, shifting 8,219 copies. Jacqueline Wilson’s Wave Me Goodbye (Doubleday Children's) said hello to second place, the only new entry in the top 20 (though Jeff Kinney’s The Long Haul made a return, in 18th place).

The first signs of Father’s Day were apparent, with Bruno Vincent’s Five Lose Dad in the Garden Centre (Quercus) charting ninth in Hardback Non-Fiction, and Peppa Pig: My Daddy (Ladybird) returning to the Pre-School chart. Time to start gift-wrapping socks.