X Factor's Matt Cardle grabs UK Christmas number one
X Factor winner Matt Cardle has scored this year's Christmas number one with his debut single, When We Collide.
Cardle sold 439,000 copies to see off competition from a number of Facebook-led campaigns, Rihanna Ft Drake, and the original version of his own single. Facebook contenders The Trashmen and Cage Against the Machine were at number three and 21. What's My Name by Rihanna Ft Drake was number two. Take That remained at the top of the albums chart with Progress. Singles by X Factor winners have had a stranglehold on the Christmas charts in recent years - a run which was ended last year when an online anti-X Factor campaign helped get Rage Against the Machine to number one. Similar campaigns were organised this year to get other songs to the top spot including Surfin' Bird by 1960s US rock band The Trashmen and a 4'33" track of silence from Cage Against the Machine. A Facebook group was also set up to encourage fans to buy the original version of Cardle's song - called Many Of Horror, by Biffy Clyro - instead of the X Factor winner's. That sold about 40,000 copies to finish eighth in the chart. However according to the OCC, Cardle's track sold almost 170,000 copies in its first two days on sale, more than three times the sales of its nearest rival, Rihanna Ft Drake, which ended up the week selling 104,000. His eventual total of 439,000 copies sold in six days was a record weekly total for a non-charity release this year, it added. Millions watched win Only Helping Haiti - with 453,000 sales in February - has sold more in a week this year. Cardle said he hadn't believed he would even make it as far as the live shows in the X Factor, much less win the competition and then take his single to number one. "I can't even begin to describe how if feels. It's nuts, crackers and crazy. To think that many people have supported me and bought the record is absolutely mind blowing," he said. More than 17 million viewers tuned in to see Cardle crowned the winner of the ITV talent show last Sunday. He beat Liverpudlian singer Rebecca Ferguson and teen group One Direction into second and third place. Take That's album sold an extra 330,000 copies last week to bring its total sales to 1.4m in just five weeks, said the Official Charts Company (OCC). The second biggest artist album, Rihanna's Loud, sold 194,000 in second, followed by Michael Buble's Crazy Love in third on 139,000. Michael Jackson's Michael entered the chart in fourth place, selling 113,000 copies. The biggest compilation album of the week, Now That's What I Call Music 77, has sold 188,000 in the past five weeks.