Christmas Number One 2018 LADBABY 'mind-blowing' win: How many copies did LadBaby sell?

Sausage rolls and the Great British Public’s love of an underdog – and a good cause – have caused a huge chart upset. After trailing behind all week and dire predictions that he wasn’t shifting enough downloads with the kids. LadBaby has pipped two pop princesses to the post. His rewoered version of Starship’s We Built This City has stormed to the UK top spot, with all proceeds going to food bank charity The Trussell Trust.

LadBaby, aka ‘dad blogger’ Mark Hoyle, told the BBC: “Thank you everybody in the UK who has got a sausage roll to the top. I don’t think anyone really gave us a chance at the start of the week.

“The public support has been absolutely unbelievable. It’s mind-blowing, it really is – it’s amazing.”

After being neck and neck with Ariana Grande and Ava Max at the start of the week, LadBaby actually scored an impressive and comprehensive victory after a huge outpouring of publuc support.

Initial “expert” opinions declared that a charity single might sell physical copies but would not appeal to younger audiences who primarily download music, nor would they listen to it on repeat like they do with their pop idols like Grande.

In the end, LadBaby’s version of Starship’s iconic 1985 hit We Built This City shifted 75,000 combined sales.

The complicated maths of modern chart calculations is based on one traditional sale being teh equivalent of 100 premium streams or 600 free streams.

Based on this criteria, LadBaby finished 18,500 combined sales ahead of Ava Max’s Sweet But Psycho, while Thank U, Next by Ariana Grande, moved down to Number Three.

The shock victory also caused a major upset for UK bookies.

LadBaby was once a distant longshot, so his sudden catapult to the top of the charts has left British punters with a major windfall.

“LadBaby has produced an early Christmas present for a bucket load of our customers and the industry will be paying out a six figure sum today,” said William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams. “The last time we got done as badly was Rage Against The Machine in 2009.”