1) Band Aid 20’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ becomes the UK’s number 1 single today, having sold around 292,000 copies on CD.
2) By the end of its first official day on sale (last Monday), the single had sold more than the rest of the next 28 best-selling singles added together; just over 72,000 in chart return shops (and not quite the 100,000 which Radio1 and Tuesday’s newspapers eagerly reported).
3) Twenty years ago, the first Band Aid single sold 750,000 in its first week.
4) To make a more recent comparison, Hear’say’s debut, ‘Pure And Simple’ sold 550,000 in its first week on sale.
5) Band Aid 20 actually charted last week – it was number 144 in last week’s chart, presumably due to some naughty retailers selling it before Monday’s official release.
6) The single features not just the new version but the 1984 original version, which must be the first time it’s been on a CD single. Perhaps if more people realised this, it would be selling even better.
7) The single also features the 1985 Live Aid version, which is a shambolic mess (for which Bob Geldof apologises in advance over the intro).
8) The original Band Aid was the fastest-selling single of all time and held the record for nearly 13 years, until Elton John beat it in 1997. (Fastest-selling means sales in the first week.)
9) Official sales figures for the 1984 version are 3.55 million, second only to Elton John in the all time list.
10) Band Aid was the 543rd UK number one single.
11) Band Aid II was the 638th UK number one single.
12) Band Aid 20 is the 997th UK number one single.
13) The catalogue number for 1984’s Band Aid, on Mercury, was FEED1.
14) The catalogue number for 1989’s Band Aid II, on PWL/Polydor, was FEED2.
15) The catalogue number for Band Aid 20, on Mercury again, is 9869413. No sense of tradition, these modern record company folk.
16) Both halves of the duet who had a hit with ‘Kids’ have now been on a Band Aid single; Kylie in 1989, Robbie in 2004.
17) No artist features on all three versions; Bananarama were on the first two, Bono and Geldof himself are on the first and third, but that’s it.
18) The 1984 Band Aid made number 13 in the USA, quite some time after Christmas, but Band Aid 20 will not get an American release, not even on the US version of iTunes.
19) The single entered the download chart at #5. Last Wednesday it fell to #8. Despite this, in an attempt to be featured in Chig’s Pop Bollox, Scott Mills announced it TWICE as a new entry at number 8. Doh!
20) Big Fun sound really, really gay on that 1989 version.

Bonus fact: 21) A New Zealand radio station has banned any plays of Band Aid 20, branding it ‘rubbish’.

Oh, and that strange coincidence which links Band Aid and Band Aid II? Deep breath, here goes…. Back in October 1963, eleven years into the singles chart’s existence, Gerry and The Pacemakers became the first act to reach number one with their first three releases. That record stood until 1984, when Frankie Goes To Hollywood became only the second act to do the same. The single which completed their hat-trick, ‘The Power Of Love’ was knocked off the top by the Band Aid single. It took another five years for a third act to make number one with their first three singles, namely Jive Bunny and The Mastermixers. Their third chart-topper, in December 1989, was ‘Let’s Party’. And guess which record deposed it from the top spot? Yep, Band Aid II. Spooky.

The coincidence runs even deeper than that, because The Beatles deposed Gerry And The Pacemakers back in 1963, so Paul McCartney replaced both the first and the second acts to debut with three number ones, as he was technically on the first Band Aid (12” only).

Of course, earlier in 1989, Holly Johnson, Gerry Marsden (without The Pacemakers) and Paul McCartney had all teamed up with The Christians on another charity number one; ‘Ferry ‘Cross The Mersey’. And…one more entanglement; Frankie Goes To Hollywood had already recorded the aforementioned Gerry and The Pacemakers hit back in 1984, when it appeared as the B-side of ‘Relax’. It’s a tangled web of pop trivia…

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