// BBC ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS — MODA & SOCIETÀ
Paul Heaton scores first number one album as Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 finally reaches top 40
English singer-songwriter Paul Heaton has scored his first solo UK number one album, his sixth overall.
Heaton's latest chart-topping LP - titled Jenius - follows his three with the Beautiful South and two more alongside former bandmate Jacqui Abbott.
The former Housemartins musician reached the top on Friday, in part, by shifting more vinyl copies than any other album over the past seven days.
Dolly Parton, who died earlier this week, aged 80, has three singles in the top 40, including 9 to 5, which landed at number 12 in this week's UK chart, having previously peaked at 47 in 1981.
Elsewhere on Friday, Sam Fender and Olivia Dean's Rein Me In extended its record as the longest-running number one single in UK chart history.
Paul Heaton with his official number one album award for Jenius
In a four-star review, external, the Times noted how Heaton's "casually funny" and "deceptively piercing" latest album "again confirms his gift for dissecting human weakness with an unsentimental but humane eye".
Victoria Segal wrote that the Ian Broudie-produced record was full of "stylistically playful songs" - like One Eye Open and Favourite Kind of Idiot - which "weave through the personal and political".
Heaton, who rose to fame as part of Hull band The Housemartins in the 1980s - alongside pre-Fatboy Slim Norman Cook - this week told the BBC he was planning on putting money behind the bar at dozens of pubs to celebrate his 65th birthday next year.
The singer made a similar gesture in 2022 when he opened £1,000 tabs at 60 pubs.