With Christmas little more than two weeks away by the close of business last Saturday, album sales rose by more than a million last week to 6,674,018, writes Alan Jones
 
That's 20.5% higher than the previous week and a mere 1.3% behind the 6,760,756 sales recorded in Week 50 of 2004 - the closest match to last week in terms of date and proximity to Christmas.
 
Two albums each contributed sales of more than 200,000 copies to the total. Now ...