Adele New Album Hit Highest Sales Ever In UK

Female singer Adele's new album sold more than eight-hundred thousand copies in its first week of release - the highest ever figure for a single UK chart week.

The album shifted more copies than the next 86 albums in the chart combined, and has become the first album to sell more than 100,000 downloads in a week.

In fact, 252,423 of the album's 800,307 sales were digital with the rest on CD.

Official Charts Company chief executive Martin Talbot said: "The statistics surrounding the album are staggering."

He added: "No album has ever sold 800,000 copies to reach number one in the history of British music."

The previous record was held by Oasis's Be Here Now, which reached number one with sales of 696,000 in 1997. However that album only went on sale three days before the end of the chart week.