A famous 5: Jamie roars back to number one

The starting pistol for the race to Christmas number one has sounded and Jamie Oliver is out of the blocks early, with his 5 Ingredients: Quick and Easy Food (Michael Joseph) shifting just under 37,000 units through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market in its first two days on sale, earning the chef his first UK Official number one in almost two years.

This represents a return to form for Oliver, whose recent books have stuttered somewhat, at least compared to his previous lofty standards. Last year's Super Food Family Classics (Michael Joseph) uncharacteristically failed to claim an overall UK number one—although it was released a month ahead of his typical late August slot and topped Hardback Non-Fiction for six consecutive weeks. 5 Ingredients' take of 36,959 copies is a whopping 309% on Super Food Family Classics' first-week haul of 9,031 units and 145% up on the 15,073 units 2015's Everyday Super Food took in its initial seven days on sale. 

Oliver's latest number one is his 57th, no other non-fiction author has had more than 25 weeks at the summit (Delia Smith is on 24). The £451,000 5 Ingredients earned through the tills last week pushed his all-time TCM sales to just over £163m, which trails only J K Rowling's £298.4m.

5 Ingredients' total last week ended Victoria Hislop's two-week run at the top. Yet her Cartes Postales from Greece (Headline) still shifted almost 21,000 units and earned its third consecutive Mass Market Fiction number one, selling 9,000 more copies than Shari Lapena's second-placed The Couple Next Door (Corgi). Philippa Gregory has also earned her third straight Hardback Non-Fiction number one, with The Last Tudor selling 8,502 copies.

Oliver knocked fellow Michael Joseph celebrity chef Nadiya Hussain from the top of Hardback Non-Fiction after five straight week. Nadiya's British Food Adventure actually improved its volume sales to 7,081, a 13% week on week jump, but was relegated to the HBNF number two spot. Paperback Non-Fiction also had a five-week streak end: Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens (Vintage) shifted 6,695 units and regained the number one slot for an eighth non-consecutive week, stopping the streak of Joshua Levine's Dunkirk (William Collins). Levine's tie-in to the Christopher Nolan film has sold just over 59,000 copies since its release on 29th June. 

The paperback of J K Rowling's, John Tiffany's and Jack Thorne's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Little Brown) retained its overall Children's crown for the fifth straight week, selling 9,281 units. The biggest children's début of the week is Andy Griffiths' and illustrator Terry Denton's The 91-Storey Treehouse (Macmillan Children's) which sold 3,791 units and hit 46th place in the overall chart. Griffiths is more or less the David Walliams of Australia, with his and Denton's middle grade Treehouse series dominating the children's bestseller lists since the first, The 13-Storey Treehouse, was released in 2011. Macmillan Children's has published the series in the UK since 2015 and it has slowly been building momentum, with last week's haul giving Griffiths and Denton enough to make their first appearance in the Top 50—this could be the point the series really takes off in Britain. 

Overall, £25.8m was spent through the tills last week, up 2.5% on this week last year. British booksellers have sold £864.7m through the tills thus far in 2017, which is 1% up on 2016.