Morrissey knocks Bridget Jones from the top of the book charts with Autobiography

Booker winner Eleanor Catton also enjoys a sizeable sales boost

Morrissey's Autobiography has topped the book charts (AP)

They've both come under some criticism for their apparently self-indulgent central characters, but it was Morrissey who beat the fictional Bridget Jones in this week's book charts.

The singer's Autobiography, which was controversially published by Penguin Classics, sold 34,918 copies last week, according to trade publication The Bookseller.

That figure is the largest first-week sale for a memoir since Kate McCann's Madeleine, which debuted with 72,500 two years ago.

It's also the biggest first-week figure for a musician's memoir since records began in 1998, beating Keith Richards by more than 6,000 copies.

The third instalment of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones series, Mad About the Boy, dropped from number one to number two this week with 32,172.

David Walliams's Demon Dentist is in third place, while David Jason and Harry Redknapp's autobiographies have both found a home in the top ten.

Next week's chart could well be topped by Sir Alex Ferguson's My Autobiography, which has already displaced Morrissey at the head of the Amazon countdown.

Man Booker Prize winner Eleanor Catton enjoyed a 1,500 per cent week-on-week sales boost for her novel The Luminaries, which sold just over 6,000 copies to reach number 33 in the overall chart.

However, those sales are the lowest from a Man Booker winner in the week following the ceremony since Anne Enright's The Gathering triumphed in 2007.