Fast work: Mosley's 800-calorie gorilla ends Pinch of Nom's run

Dr Michael Mosley’s Fast 800 Keto (Short Books) jumped eight places week-on-week to claim the UK’s Official Number One and in the process gave Hachette division Octopus its first ever overall top spot. 

Mosley dislodged Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom Comfort Food (Bluebird) which had been atop the charts for a month straight and for six out of the last seven weeks. Fast 800 Keto shifted 20,653 units through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market compared to 17,581 copies for Featherstone and Allison’s title, which fell to second place overall, while retaining the Hardback Non-Fiction number one. However, Pinch of Nom Comfort Food still was the week’s bestseller in value terms, earning £180,000 through the TCM to Fast 800 Keto’s £139,000. 

This is the ninth time Mosley has earned a UK pole position, all with former indie Short which was acquired by Hachette and became part of Octopus in June 2019. Three different Mosley titles have hit number one, a feat he last accomplised with a two-week run at the summit with The Fast 800 in January 2019. The nutritionist retained the Paperback Non-Fiction top spot for the fifth straight week, and he now has 33 number ones in that chart, level with early-Noughties diet guru Robert Atkins. At an impressive 70 weeks, Joe Wicks is the only other diet and fitness author with more Paperback Non-Fiction number ones.  But it certainly was a good week at chez Mosley, worthy of a toast (providing it is not a fasting day) as his wife Dr Clare Bailey’s and Justine Pattinson’s The Fast 800 Easy (Short) returned to the Top 50, hitting 38th place on 3,554 copies. The Mosley (£10.1m) and Bailey (£6.4m) household has earned a combined £16.5m through BookScan since they were first published a decade ago.  

Mark Billingham’s standalone Rabbit Hole (Sphere), which was the previous week’s highest new entry when it débuted in seventh place, moved up to third and grabbed the Mass Market Fiction number one; it is the Tom Thorne creator’s fifth time atop that chart. Rabbit Hole bumped Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us (Simon & Schuster) to second in Mass Market Fiction, though it was still a grand week for the TikTok favourite as she still had three titles in the overall top 11.

The highest new entry of the week Sophie Stokes-Chapman’s Georgian London-set mystery with ancient Greek themes debut Pandora (Harvill, 4,447 copies) landed in 25th place on the overall chart and displaced Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice (Viking) atop Original Fiction. Meanwhile, Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End (Simon & Schuster) celebrated a solid month atop the Children’s chart.       

The full-market TCM was flat from the previous week with value sales at £29.9m. Though there is no year-on-year comparison owing to 2021’s lockdown, the £29.9m is 29% up on the fourth week of January in 2020. Volume, meanwhile, rose 3.5% to 3.49 million copies sold.