<P> The song had advance orders of 250,000 within a week of its recording, and orders from record dealers had topped one million by 8 December . In order to meet demand, Phonogram had all five of their European factories put to work pressing the single . </P> <P> "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was released on Monday 3 December 1984 . It received further publicity from a launch party on 7 December at the Royal Albert Hall during the charity event "Dinner at Albert's", an evening of music to raise money for Save the Children and the Ethiopia Famine Relief Fund . The single entered the UK Singles Chart the following week at number one, outselling all the other records in the chart put together, with the 7" single alone selling 200,000 copies in the first two days of release . </P> <P> In the United States, the video was played on MTV frequently throughout the Christmas season . Released in the US on 10 December 1984 on Columbia Records, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" sold 1.9 million copies in its first eleven days on release but did not reach number 1 there, due to the more complex nature of the chart system, which counted airplay as well as sales . Despite outselling the official number 1 by four to one, it did not make the top ten due to a lack of airplay, ultimately peaking at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 . </P> <P> Due to the time constraints of releasing the single as quickly as possible, the promotional video for the song simply featured footage from the recording session . David Bowie, who had been Geldof's original choice to sing the song's opening line but who had been unable to attend the recording, flew into England from Switzerland to record a short introduction for the video to be played on the BBC's flagship television music show Top of the Pops . However, Geldof was unhappy when he discovered that the show's regulations meant that the song and its video could not be played until it had actually charted . Undeterred, he contacted BBC1 controller Michael Grade directly and successfully persuaded Grade to order that every programme preceding that week's episode of Top of the Pops should start five minutes early to make space to broadcast the song's video (complete with Bowie's introduction) just before the show . </P>

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