Band Aid on target for UK Xmas number one slot

The new Band Aid single is in pole position to be this year’s Christmas number one, experts said today.

Ronan Keating’s track Father and Son, and Kylie’s I Believe in You are favourites for the seasonal number two and three.

But Do They Know it’s Christmas?, featuring the likes of Chris Martin, Dido, Robbie Williams, Justin Hawkins and Bono, is currently selling as much as the combined top 20 in the singles chart.

HMV predicts the charity single will sell another 300,000 copies in the final week leading up to Christmas.

Spokesman Gennaro Castaldo said: “Band Aid 20 is set to surpass our initial expectations of being a million-seller.

“It is currently outselling Ronan and Kylie by a combined margin of five to one.

“By the end of the week, it should have sold 800,000 copies.”

He said: “The only realistic challenge to an extended run of weeks at the top will come from X-Factor’s Steve Brookstein, but even that is looking unlikely.”

Brookstein’s debut single, a cover of Phil Collins’ Against All Odds, will be released on December 20, too late to make an impact on the Christmas number one.

Do They Know It’s Christmas? has become the UK’s biggest and fastest selling single of 2004.

It has overtaken Eamon’s Don’t Want You Back, which sold 552,407 copies following its release in April.

The track is on course to be the first million selling single since 2002, when Pop Idol’s Will Young and Gareth Gates crashed the charts.

William Hill makes Ronan favourite to be number two at 1-4, Kylie second favourite at 11-4, followed by Morrissey (16-1), Bo Selecta and Ice Cube (both 25-1) and Sir Cliff Richard (50-1).

A William Hill spokesman said: “The race to be number one in the album charts is very much closer.”

It makes Robbie Williams slight favourite at 4-5, with U2 second favourites and Simon Cowell’s operatic band Il Divo third.