Songfacts®:

• The stunningly attractive Kate Bush has her dark side, as evinced by "Army Dreamers" and similar tracks. This is a more straightforward song though - about a poisoner! Running to 3 minutes 39 seconds, this is the ninth track on Kate's second album. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• This was inspired by a paranoid cab driver Kate met who was convinced he was being poisoned. "[He] was in fact a bit nutty," she explained in the album's promo materials. "And it's just a song about someone who thinks they're being poisoned by another person, they think that there's Belladonna in their tea and that whenever they offer them something to eat, it's got poison in it. And it's just a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it in a Brechtian style, the old sort of German vibe [e.g. "Mack The Knife"] to try and bring across the humor side of it."
• The lyrics mention "pictures of Crippen." Hawley Harvey Crippen was an American doctor who murdered his wife at their home in England in 1910 by overdosing her with the anti-nausea drug hyoscine. He tried to escape to Canada on an ocean liner but was captured when the captain recognized him and sent a wireless telegram to British authorities. It was the first time a suspect was apprehended with the aid of wireless telegraphy.
• Despite its German influence, this tune was actually written while Kate was visiting the US to appear on Saturday Night Live.