I had thought I might have to write about it in that tiny sliver of summer we had this year, but turns out I come to it at the end of September – a proper September, as Robin Carmody put it on his blog: crispness in the air, conkers on the ground and a sense of anticipation. “Back to school weather”, I always think of it as, but when I was small there was something else too – the week when the weather turned was the first time I’d allow myself to think about Christmas. And once I realised that, the first thought of Christmas became a new Christmas tradition for me – it being a time unusually welcoming to traditions.
This was the big difference between Christmas and Birthdays, the two poles of the year as a kid. On my birthday I wanted surprises – at Christmas, even when I was only old enough to remember a handful, I wanted anything but. This urge for the familiar wasn’t exactly unique to me – it’s what the secular Christmas industry is based on, and it’s the coin of almost every hit Christmas song; a parade of comforting festive images. I can really sympathise with people who had miserable Christmasses as a child and dislike the season now – the collective will to enjoy it, and to enjoy it in particular ways, must be stifling.
But once you’re in the collective, Christmas is generous and flexible – it’s as much about the family eccentricities, the little personal traditions, as Nat King Cole style fantasias. Chestnuts roasting – well, fine, but Dad trying to light all the candles with one match, and telling the same cracker joke every year: now that’s Christmas. And this is the warm genius of Slade’s song, now as unshiftable a feature of the British Christmastime as cake and tinsel. This is a boozy, raucous family Christmas, unashamedly modern but in no way cynical.
You could make a case that “Merry Xmas” is Slade emasculating themselves – it bounces feistily along but there’s none of the venom, threat or even arrogance that they’d brought to glam rock. Its most famous, joyous moment – Noddy’s excited bellow just before the end – makes me remember it as a louder and less gentle record than it actually is. But that’s okay – it’s a generous, welcoming song for what ought to be a generous time.
Score: 9
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A very generous, thoughtful and sincere appreciation of a British institution, Tom. But I still never want to hear it again. It’s not that I dislike it, its just that I know it inside out and back to front to the extent where it now signifies nothing at all. Unlike Wizzard, The Wombles or Wham, to name three obviously similar records which didn’t get to number one which I still find pleasure in.
Also, whenever I hear the line “Does your granny always tell you that the old songs are the best – then she’s up there rock’n’rolling with the rest?” I always feel duty bound to mentally answer “No. That sort of thing never occurred in my family.”
1973 was a particularly good year for Glam with all it’s gaudy glittery trappings & noisey singalong choruses. So it makes sense that Glam should fit perfectly into the Christmas tradition. IMHO this year gave us the best two Christmas singles ever made. Wizzard & Slade. Even Elton’s Step Into Christmas still ranks up there among the best for me. Yes, I am a traditionalist, I love Christmas (well the idea of it at least), so I look forward every year to playing the same old songs (and trying to uncover some new unheard gems). As Tom says its the familiarity which draws you in. Slade give you the Christmas party knees up while Wizzard embrace Snowmen & Santa. Thankfully the Xmas 1973 TOTP survived the BBC culling of archive tapes to remind us of these gloriously tacky (but sincere) times. This was probably the peak of Glam, as already mentioned, 1974 would soon see a steady decline.
The weather right now is vile and repellent! End-of-September weather isn’t usually great but I don’t remember it being this disgusting before.
I really, really, really hate this song…it jollies you along in a really intrusive way. It’s the sort of song which HAS to be consumed collectively to make any sense at all, there’s no space for the individual at all…I can’t put my own stamp on it, I can’t make it mine or find a way into it, it’s entirely tacky Xmas decorations and enforced fun and hellish Xmas shops and the seething anger I feel when my time is consumed slowly but endlessly by this stupid annual ritual. (Yes obv I hated and STILL hate Xmas, I had a religious upbringing.) Zero out of ten.
Some historical background: if the song sounded peculiarly like a 1967 hangover at the time of its original release that is because Noddy and Jim originally wrote the tune in ’67 as a stab at psychedelia entitled “Buy Me A Rocking Chair” (when they were still called the N’Betweens) but the band as a whole weren’t keen on it so back into the bottom drawer it went. Jim remembered the tune, however, and fished it out again when the idea of recording a Christmas single came up. Aware that the record would be released in a time of extreme crisis – the oil shortage, the miners’ and power workers’ strikes, three-day weeks, rationing of electricity and so forth – Noddy tailored the new lyric specifically to Cheer The Nation Up, to remind everyone of goodness and fun and simplicity, even going for the winking granny vote (a sly nod to the Singalongamax mania prevalent in the older generation of record buyers at the time). The winding major/minor roads of the chorus, together with that very 1967 harmonium which weighs the track down with a curiously large bottom, indicates something along the lines of: we know the country’s in a shit state but let’s make the best of it just like granny did in far more parlous circumstances.
Famously the record was actually made in New York at the boiling hot height of summer; Lennon was in the studio next door working on Mind Games and at one point rushed in to compliment Noddy on his vocal power (“you sound just like me when I was a lad!”) – in fact it was Lennon who both suggested and lent them the harmonium to fill out the arrangement.
For me ’73 was about the last Christmas where I was able to believe in Santa Claus, and no matter how many millions of times I hear this record it still brings back the old magic of awakening, blinking, at five in the morning looking at the presents gathered around the lit Christmas tree, rushing to open them up, the way everything in the house looked different just because it was Christmas Day – decorations or no decorations – the television, the turkey, the aforementioned Xmas TOTP – all of it; the enchanting smell of the cooking coming from the kitchen, the general feeling of warmth, security and true happiness. And it does so more effectively than any other Xmas single I can think of (Wizzard was the knowingly comedic effort which I always associate in my mind with those marathon Christmas Night With The Stars extravaganzas you’d get on BBC and ITV at the time (even though you knew they’d probably recorded them in September).
Slade, then – the fourth single to go in at number one in its year (and the third by them), the first ever incidence of two consecutive number one debuts. At the top of their game. And they never made number one again, and for the next straight-in-at-the-top single we’ll have to wait more than six years.
The best thing about this is that wonderful bluesy rock chord on “everyBODy” in an otherwise fairly ordinary happy tune. Just brilliant.
Yeeahhh, been waiting for this one. But once again Marcello gets in first with a few aspects I was going to touch on – the consecutive straight-in-at-number-ones, the next one not for six years, the crisis in the country at the time of its release, etc. Still, I’ll soldier on ; )
Incidentally though, Marcello, aren’t you crediting Noddy with great political foresight in knowing during that hot New York July that we’d be in such a miserable state by December? Did he anticipate the Yom Kippur War and its effect on oil prices as well as the power workers’ strike and three-day week? Maybe the next Robin Day was standing there in that mirrored top hat and we didn’t know it.
Joking aside though, it did play a very vital role. I didn’t realise until reading Popular that Noddy was indeed aware of his band’s beneficial effect as court jesters in what was one of the bleakest periods the country can have known outside of wartime. The aforementioned troubles, the buildup of the IRA campaign… on a less serious note England’s elimination by Poland in the World Cup qualifying group in the “Tomaszewski match” (not that that will have upset you much, MC), Manchester United hurtling towards relegation (not that that will have upset many of you much but it bugged the hell out of me!). And closer to home I was suffering low-level bullying at school – it never got physical but it was distressing enough for a while – and my parents came the closest they ever came to splitting up.
So then you get to Christmas, and – well I’m sure there’s a web page somewhere giving the TV listings for that day, but in between the turkey, the tinsel and the rest of the happy memories Marcello evokes so beautifully, I imagine there was Leslie Crowther in a children’s hospital, Billy Smart’s Circus (not our Popular correspondent), a film to follow the Queen, and Eric and Ernie in the evening. And the centrepiece being the classic Xmas TOTP of ’73, the apotheosis of glam. As intothefire mentions, two fantastic Christmas singles (Slade’s being the first Christmas number one *about* Christmas since Dickie Valentine’s Christmas Alphabet in 1955). Wizzard remarkably only made number 4, kept out of the top 3 by Gary Glitter, holding on for Xmas no 2, and at three the first new number one of 1974 on its way up. Another perennial from Elton further down, and don’t forget “Gaudete” by Steeleye Span, which I didn’t get at the time but appreciate now.
But, as has been hinted here before, this peak was followed abruptly by a changing of the guard. The established pop firmament of David-Donny-Gary-Slade-Sweet-Wizzard was about to depart. Of all the acts that had a No 1 single in 1973, only one returned to the top any later than the mid-point of 1974 – and if you’d asked that Xmas TOTP audience to nominate which one, I guess not many would have picked out 10cc. Two four-piece bands which made their chart debuts within a month of each other in spring ’74 would be the biggest chart acts of the next decade, and the dominant chart music genre of the next decade was gaining strength on dancefloors across the world.
As for Slade, who would have thought this would be their last number 1? The following years saw them produce intelligent and thoughtful songs and many more cracking singles, but the likes of “The Banging Man”, “Far Far Away” and “How Does It Feel” never emulated the feats of what were in some cases inferior tracks pushed out during their commercial peak. What a band.
Well Noddy has always said that they were sick and tired of the formula by this time and wanted to move on and do different things; thus the ballads, the film (even TOTP producer Robin Nash warned them: “Great film lads but you’ll lose most of your audience”), the brave but commercially suicidal extended campaign to break the band in the States (the “you’ve been away so long, lads, you’ve been forgotten” syndrome) – ironically, “How Does It Feel?” which is probably one of their best and certainly one of their most moving singles, was also one of their oldest songs, dating from ’68. After punk times became leaner until the metal audience brought them back, and don’t forget that they nearly pulled off a surprise second Christmas number one ten years after the first.
Incidentally, in Pedant’s Corner, “Mary’s Boy Child” didn’t have Christmas in its title but was unavoidably about Christmas. We haven’t seen the last of that tune either.
You’re right, I meant to say “with Christmas in the title”…
Evidence that glam’s influence is still with us – I had to chuckle on learning that the Glasgow banknote forger who was sent to jail this week was nicknamed “Hologram Tam”!
I love Christmas music as fellow poptimists know well from Christmases past. My feelings on MXE however are similar to Billy Smart’s. I still listen out for and take pleasure in Holder’s “excited bellow” when the song comes on the radio, but it’s the one moment I feel any connection to – nothing much in the lyrics strikes a chord.
My brother-in-law owns a Slade Christmas Party LP, which ends with a live version of MXE that has much more of a venomous bovver-boy stomp to it than the single. It’s awful (in all senses of the word).
Does anybody have a good word for the Oasis cover version, by the way? I think that the decision to recast the song as a reflective ballad in a ‘Half the World Away’ fashion was an understandable one, but doesn’t really work.
Noddy really was something of a seer if he could write ‘How Does it Feel’ – a brilliant, rueful, song of disillusion and decline – before his band had even started their ascent.
There’s a good 1973 Nick Kent interview with Mick Jagger where Jagger says that for what they do, Slade are the best group of their time. Spot on, and praise well-earned from a man not noted for his generosity of spirit.
interesting the jagger and lennon both responded so strongly: i think there was a sense at the time that slade were going to be more overtly important than they quite were in the end — the actually rather subtle line they trod within glam (between skinheads and panto dames) didn’t speak much to rock’s 1973 ideas of “seriousness”, and i’m not sure that they cared to bother to make it do so (contrast w.mott the hoople, who were certainly more interested in “being arty”) (i’d like to see a musicological contrast made, though, rather than one based on image or words)
after punk arrived, you could see plenty of foax picking up on some of slade’s semi-secret strengths and being arty with them — PiL being one kind of mutant future (or would have been if they’d had more reliable drummers)
Not to mention the Pistols themselves – compare and contrast intros to “Skweeze Me” and “Holidays In The Sun” which do sound AWFULLY SIMILAR, including BOOT input! – and their heirs (in more senses than one) the Jam who ended up getting the prosaic mass appeal vote.
Mott had the skronk sax of course – check out that freakout at the end of “All The Way From Memphis” (haven’t got my Mott albums to hand at the moment since I’m at work but I can’t remember whether that was Andy Mackay or Bowie hisself).
Interestingly, in the same 1973 interview, Jagger had been to see Mott playing live the night before and comments on their musical slackness and shambolic nature, which he interprets as showing a lack of professionalism and seriousness of intent, observing that he now belongs to a different age with different values. He was only 30 at the time. Pop moved on at a faster rate in those days!
In those days I thought 30 was ANCIENT! Albert Steptoe time!
Musical slackness/shambolic nature of course meticulously described in Diary Of A Rock & Roll Star which someone should really republish, period language permitting.
diary of 1xR&RS which i own and should actually READ (and comment on on FT)!
i think i would argue that the pistols followed up on a slightly dfft slade-ish “subtle line” to PiL (who i only just realised as i made that post were mutant children of slade), but to make the argt convincingly i wd have to re-listen to all of them
(it wd go start this: mott and the pistols didnt really have reggae in their heads at all — slade and pil did)
koganbot has a better ear for all this — he actually plays guitar (or used to)
I don’t know about Mott being “arty”… they affected the prevalent glam-pop stylings of the day, but until Mick Ralphs left to form Bad Company (after Mott, before The Hoople) there was still more than a whiff of great-coated “heavy” studium (pace MC) about them, and Ian Hunter certainly seemed to buy into that whole rock-and-roll messiah/spokesman paradigm in a way that Noddy & co most assuredly didn’t.
Erithian made most of the points that I was going to make about that 1973 Christmas chart, which of course stayed in place for two weeks rather than one, thus making it all the more definitive as Glam’s Grand Finale. It was understandable that many of the key players then felt the need to progress in some way, and maybe it was just bad timing that so many reached the same position at the same time.
And thus it was that Slade followed up with the worthy but dirgey ballad “Everyday”, GG with the plodding premature curtain-call “Remember Me This Way”, and T.Rex with the elegaic and equally downtempo “Teenage Dream” (“whatever happened to the…). The Sweet had one more Chinnichap classic in them before making an awkwardly mis-firing excursion into heavier territory (which had always lurked on their self-penned B-sides), while Wizzard put out an album of comparatively respecftul straight-up late 50s/early 60s pastiches. As discussed before, Cassidy never recovered from the Whelan tragedy, while The Osmonds further diluted their brand and, hit by poor sales in the US, retreated into showbiz.
On a personal level, Christmas 1973 was our first since my parents’ divorce, and hence touched by an invisible sadness that no-one spoke about and everyone danced around, gamely trying to resuscitate the magic. (Plying my sister and myself with gifts being one of the key strategies; it was at about this point that the vinyl habit kicked off in earnest.) And so, yes, there was something immensely reassuring about “Merry Xmas Everybody”, which depicted the sort of fondly idealised holiday season which we dearly wanted to cling to – but with enough wry realism and unspun warmth for the exercise to ring true.
(Even if I couldn’t listen to the jokey line about Daddy catching Mummy kissing Santa Claus without briefly freezing in embarrassment. Most lyrics in most songs about infidelity, abdandonment or lost love in general had that effect on me.)
Footnote: It wasn’t quite Slade’s last Number One, though: the hugely likeable Old New Borrowed & Blue briefly topped the album charts a couple of months later.
I looked it up and it seems it’s Andy Mackay on saxophone – I guess David was busy at the time…
Was this towards the end of the Stones’ four-great-albums-in-a-row period? It sounds as if he was all “kids these days, they don’t know the meaning of hard work” and that sounds kind of (can I say the word?) rockist to me…
No doubt once I’m living in Britain I will get to know this and all other traditional Christmas songs really really well…
Yeah, ’twas Andy Mackay… though Bowie wasn’t too busy to supply guest sax on Steeleye Span’s cover of “To Know Him Is To Love Him”, which surfaced on Now We Are Six in the spring of 74.
Not to mention Lulu’s “The Man Who Sold The World” (plus b vox, plus production), her biggest UK hit since “Boom Bang A Bang.”
Yes, 1973 was the year of Goats Head Soup and “Starfucker” so the Stones weren’t really in a position to brag…and everyone should go to YouTube now and look up the video for “It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll” (’74, premiered on Lift Off With Ayesha) wherein they are dressed as sailors (a la cover of Muscle Of Love) and slowly drown in a tidal wave of bubbly bath foam.
It should be noted that Mott themselves were at the lower, artier end of that Xmas top ten with “Roll Away The Stone,” nudging next to Leo Sayer in full clown make-up with “The Show Must Go On,” David Essex’s “Lamplight” (featuring Paul Rutherford in the brass section – RIP) and Roxy’s “Street Life.” Meanwhile, Bolan had to be content with a seriously deflating number 12 placing with “Truck On (Tyke)” which I always interpreted as a tribute to the bulldog puppy in Tom and Jerry.
Oh, I well remember that “Roll Away The Stone”/”Lamplight”/”Street Life” threesome – those three singles seemed to ascend and descend the chart together, always sitting more or less next to each other as I watched the TOTP countdowns, thumb extended Nero-style in snap judgement of each entry.
arty!
things i meant by arty:
i. hunter’s aims and sensibility overlap more with bowie’s than their sound — in pure — might lead you to expect, or indeed their audience
ii. name = lit.ref., and they quote d.h.lawrence on one of their sleeves
iii. not so far from roxy, but with less weird random panache, they have a pop-art sense of pop’s history as an element to conjure with
iv. yr right about the “greatcoat spokeman” vibe, mike, tho i’m not sure it’s totally a counter-argument (mott were walking a funny line also, which was partly, i dunno, sociologically aware metal?)
in fact i think they quote dhl on THAT sleeve!
And of course the crucial link of Morgan Fisher, ex-Love Affair and future Lol Coxhill collaborator.
i love this sleeve:
fun fact: dr vick is related to escher! (this will mean little to some of you but !!)
It all makes sense now…
(a few years later we were on holiday in Blackpool, and therefore within the Granada TV catchment area, so were able to catch So It Goes. The first item on the first episode I remember watching was Mott – without the Hoople or Hunter – doing “Shouting And Pointing” with my dad shouting and pointing at the screen: “for fuck’s sake is that the best you can do?” We caught the Pistols one as well. My dad reckoned they were like Gong trying to be the Sweet)
Yes, the D.H.Lawrence poem was indeed on the back sleeve of Mott – it was something about wanting to stage a revolution for fun, and I even ended up borrowing a book of DHL poetry from Doncaster library on the strength of it. So, um, perhaps you have a point!
(The same sleeve carried the Mott fan club address, c/o one Kris “ZigZag” Needs, who presumably had taken over from Benazir Bhutto by that stage, or was it t’other way round?)
No you’re right, it was Benazir and then Kris.
And a quick nod to the massive glam hit of 1973 that never was but should have been: “Sebastian” by Cockney Rebel, number one everywhere else in Europe, number bubbling under here.
Also, the best contemporary Slade ripoff was “Kick Your Boots Off” by a group calling themselves Sisters – it appears on the Velvet Tinmine compilation and it’s a bit like Bernie Clifton on Seaside Special (or a young Redcoated Barrymore?) trying to do Slade. “But we’re gonna keep it clean!” Aw, bless!
What’s this about Benazir Bhutto?
Actually I’m totally wrong; Kris edited the Mott fanzine and crazy teenage Mott fan Benazir took over.
was BB just a a.n.other MtH fan or the actual official addressee of all fan club mail?
(i am honestly staggered by this tidbit of info — i never heard it before, possibly bcz as a longtime long-ago zigzag reader i developed severe needs allergy so did not choose to read his book)
also is there any evidence for this story BESIDES k.needs?
Yes, I think that BB herself has confirmed it, but would struggle to give you a source; it’s one of those little nuggets that re-surfaces from time to time. I didn’t know about the fanzine – was this the “Sea Divers” that the Mott sleeve mentions? (Working from possibly addled memory here.)
Yep.
(nb: direct Mott/PiL link – “‘ullo” at the beginning of “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” -> “‘ullo” at the beginning of “Public Image”)
i’m being perverse i expect but i am much more interested in mining a pil/slade lineage!
I’m enjoying the Mott talk! I seem to remember reading long ago that Queen supported Mott, and I’ve often thought that some of the more stagey Mott numbers (Violence, Crash St Kids, Stiff Upper Lip) might have been the first blueprints of what would eventually blossom as Bo Rap.
The semi-unruly violin links “Coz I Luv You” to “Flowers Of Romance.”
those in the know feel free to tell me if this is obvious / totally wrong!
Nice theory, but I dunno that I buy it, byebyepride. The episodic theatricality of Bo Rap can at least be traced back to “March of the Black Queen” on Queen II, which pre-dates the Mott tour in early 74.
This is my favourite Slade track and my favourite Christmas track: zero mention of organised religion, hitherto mythical figures derobed to reveal it’s actually someone’s dad in a big red suit (ha and not your own!), and above all a good tune. It’s all about the bassline, going up and down the stairs like it’s forgotten to pick something up then once it’s returned it can’t remember why but remembers something else it needed, and so on.
And there’s NO FVCKING SLEIGH BELLS.
Uncle Noddy’s annual pension and surely the ultimate Xmas chart-topper, although I have already aired a hankering for The Wombles, which, as regular contributors will recall, cost me a rather unexpected and uncharacteristic mauling from one of you when I coupled this with my extreme dislike of another much more recent yuletide staple. Those ecology-loving aardvarks fell just short of the top, in fact, whereas Slade gloriously flew straight in at the top in mid December and didn’t budge until February was well in sight, an incredible stat for a seasonal hit.
The song is so happy and good natured, it’s impossible not to like it. The lyric throughout is a charming family overview of the festive season and it bounces along up to it’s delirious conclusion when Noddy screams out at the top of his lungs a reminder of what it’s all about. A heart-warming offering. Eternally may it remain included amongst our annual Christmas fare.
thanks mike! I am totally unschooled in Queen, so had no idea.
Can’t offer a Slade-PiL link, but I can do you a Slade-Devo: compare and contrast the opening of “Do We Still Do It” (from Old New Borrowed & Blue, repeated in the middle and at the end) with the main descending riff in “Jocko Homo”.
I don’t care what anyone says, whether it’s the local supermarket stocking christmas mince pies in September with a use by date of a week! Or the ads on the telly trying to get you to buy stuff 3 months in advance.
When you have the radio on at work all day, in mid-december they can play that bloody “Stop the Cavalry” record as long as they want…
But it’s not Christmas until they play Slade!!!
The regular “Nod-slot” on Stuart Maconie’s R2 show was a gem last night – Noddy was debunking inaccurate information on his Wikipedia entry (e.g that he’d made a record with Anna Ford), and they looked again 20 minutes later to find it had been corrected complete with a reference to the show! Maybe someone should tell him about this site sometime.
The giveaway was that the alleged duet – a cover of Shakin’ Stevens’ “You Drive Me Crazy” peaked at #37 in 1983 when any fule kno that only seven singles achieved that peak in that year and these were as follows:
Wah! – Hope (I Wish You’d Believe Me) (this SHOULD have been number one for 98 weeks, especially the full-length 12″ version with acoustic “Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory” prelude, and will be a number one for Robbie if he’s got enough sense to cover it)
Chill Fac-Torr – Twist (Round ‘N’ Round) (Mike A is hating me already for reminding him of this)
Toto – I Won’t Hold You Back (exquisite and the foundation of a future number one)
Level 42 – Micro-Kid (Adornoite jazz-funkers identify contemporary isolationist consumerist entrapment A GENERATION AHEAD OF THEIR TIME)
AC/DC – Guns For Hire (big 1973 shoutout for Geordie btw, esp. “All Because Of You” with scary sped-up vocal intro)
Hot Chocolate – Tears On The Telephone (rather boring)
Jingle Belles – Christmas Spectre (guess)
OK Marcello, you’re scaring me now. 🙂
I hated that bloody Chill Fac-Torr single, as championed by dear old Dale “Godfather of Hip Hop” Winton on his Monday night Soul Show at Radio Trent.
“will be a number one for Robbie if he’s got enough sense to cover it)”
He should use it as the follow-up to his number one achieved by covering Never Loved As A Child from the 1998/2000 Wah! elpee though.
It’s a disgrace when a great band’s (because a great band they were) greatest ever moment is a seasonal hit that you just don’t put on unless the calendar shows December.
Like with Wham! I have the same problem with Slade. This is their pinnacle. This is the one song where they got everything right. Sure, they were very close on several songs that would be released the following couple of years (none of them hitting UK #1), but they were never as great as this.
Surely, the lyrics are Christmasy enough and sort of only annoys you because it means this song may only be played at that particular time of year. But the rest is oh so perfect, with a great tune, there greatest ever chorus, and one of the best middle-eights ever written The harmonies at the end of the chorus were even remiscent of The Beatles at their best.
One of my all-time-favourite Christmas songs, and surely the best thing Slade ever did.
For those of us born after 1973 (in my case, fifteen years after), this song seems to have been around since the beginning of time. It always made me wonder – before this and Wizzard came out, what *did* people dance to at Christmas parties? Slow-waltz to ‘White Christmas’?
It contributes to my earliest musical memories anyway, as I remember it playing at my nursery school’s Christmas party in 1993. Then I knew it simply as the song from the Andrex advert, with the puppy running down the hill.
Haven’t got tired of this *just* yet, but I think it’s gradually starting to be overtaken in the general media by previously ‘underrated’ songs by The Pogues and Mariah Carey, in the last few years they’ve been getting more airplay. Always secretly preferred Wizzard, anyway.