It was only the band's second number one, issued as Beatlemania was in its infancy - but newly compiled figures show She Loves You to be the biggest selling Fab Four track ever released in the UK.

The 1963 single topped a chart of the act's greatest sales tallies commissioned by BBC Radio 2, pushing its follow-up I Want To Hold Your Hand into second spot.

The Official Chart Company - which puts together the weekly top 40 - has trawled its records to pull together an all-time best-seller list of the band's singles, including the many re-releases over the years.

The chart was broadcast for the first time by BBC Radio 2 during The Great Beatles Songbook: Volume 1, presented by Ken Bruce.

Despite the later acclaim for the band's innovations and experimentation during the studio-bound years, the list is dominated by tracks up to and including 1965.

As well as She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand, the top five is made up of Can't Buy Me Love, I Feel Fine and the double A-side Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out.

Interestingly the figures show that Love Me Do, the band's first chart hit which only reached number 17 on its initial release, went on to outsell the number two hit which followed it, Please Please Me, as well as later number ones such as The Ballad Of John And Yoko, the figures reveal today.

Despite its enduring popularity, Yesterday - often cited as the most covered song of all time - figures at number 24, even though the track was never issued as a single in the UK during the band's lifetime. It was not released until 1976 and only made number eight in the chart.

Similarly, Back In The USSR (ranked 29) was issued in 1976, as was a version of Strawberry Fields Forever. The original had been a double A-side with Penny Lane, which had stalled at number two in the charts, ending a huge run of number ones and held from the top by Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me.

Ken Bruce said: "The song that gave us 'yeah yeah yeah' has obviously been getting the seal of approval from the public ever since."