Ed Sheeran has the lowest-selling number 1 album for 17 years

Bit of a good news, bad news day for Ed Sheeran, whose album ‘+’ hit number one this week, despite selling only 20,607 copies. Not since Ed was three has an album sold fewer copies to make it to the top of the album charts, with The Levellers’ 1995 album ‘Zeitgeist’ taking the award few artists want. Though, to be fair to Ed, the Brighton band did live in a time when you literally had to buy a record to know what it sounded like. And, actually, the news that his multi-platinum album (900,000 at the last count) could return to the top nearly four months after it was released, is hardly the stuff of tears before bedtime, unless by “tears” you mean “shrugging happily”.