Walliams derails Hawkins for 14th number one

David Walliams has claimed his 14th Official UK Top 50 number one, as The World’s Worst Children (HarperCollins) shunted Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Black Swan) off the top spot, selling 64,137 copies for £441,875 through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market.

After missing out to Hawkins a week ago by just 2,000 copies, Walliams’ short story collection decisively beat The Girl on the Train into second place, shifting nearly 20,000 copies more than the psychological thriller. The World’s Worst Children, which increased in volume 8% on its debut week, is Walliams’ fourth straight title to hit the number one spot. Last week represents the biggest week for a Children’s title for the year to date, beating both World Book Day number ones Cavan Scott's Star Wars: The Escape (Egmont) and Roald Dahl’s The Great Mouse Plot (Puffin).

Walliams’ backlist makes a resurgence whenever the comedian-turned-author has a hit, and no less than four Walliams titles charted in the Top 50 last week, with Awful Auntie in 27th place, Gangsta Granny in 43rd place and Demon Dentist in 49th. A further four Walliams titles hit the top 100.

The Girl on the Train’s run at number one may have finally come to a complete stop, but its volume of 44,493 copies last week means the mass market edition surpasses the quarter of a million copies sold milestone after less than one month on sale. It has also racked up the longest run as Mass Market Fiction number one since Transworld stablemate Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins, which held the top spot for four weeks at the start of the year.

The Ladybird Book for Grown Ups title How it Works: The Dad (Michael Joseph) held the Hardback Non-Fiction number one for a second week, as Father’s Day-related titles—mostly autobiographies of sporting figures and spy thrillers—inched up the charts.

Joe Wicks’ Lean in 15 (Bluebird) reclaimed the Paperback Non-Fiction number one spot from the Hairy Dieters’ Fast Food (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), for a 19th non-consecutive week. With the publication of the sequel just weeks away, the clean-eating cookbook is still yet to sell fewer than 15,000 copies per week in over five months on sale.

Peter James' Love You Dead (Pan) held the Original Fiction number one for a second week, the author's eighth week at the top in total.