Mission accomplished!

The journey may be over, but what a journey it has been for a group of firefighters who came under the collective The Fire Tones.

Created from a Welshpool night out by one of the town’s firefighters, Chris Birdsell-Jones, The Fire Tones won the hearts of the nation and were supported by thousands of sales of their stunning version of The Band Aid classic ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?”.

The charts are a complicated business these days, but this weekend The Fire Tones were confirmed as Christmas No. 1 in physical sales of CDs, and No. 9 in the downloads.

With streaming accounting for up to 95% of the final chart position, the single still managed to reach No. 27 on the Official Vodafone Top 40 which was released last night. The No. 1 overall was Lad Baby’s ‘We Built This City’.

An incredible achievement considering there was no major record label behind the team, and BBC Radio One and Two deciding to shun the single.

This afternoon, Chris wanted to thank our readers and his team for an extraordinary effort.

"It has been incredible," he said. "I can't thank the team that pulled all of this together enough, not to mention all the wonderful people who bought, downloaded or streamed the track to get us this unbelievable end result. Thank you all so much."  

But the real winners from the project will be The Firefighters Charity and Band Aid Trust who will share all the proceeds raised between them.