Songfacts®:

• Lord Rockingham's XI were the House band for Jack Good's British TV show Oh Boy!. The Classic UK 45s website states that there were actually 13 musicians in Lord Rockingham's XI, "if you included the Scottish bandleader Harry Robinson and lady organist Cherry Wainer." The site adds that "Well known jazz 'buff'" and future BBC Radio 2 presenter Benny Green "played alto saxophone with the band, but was so embarrassed by it that he often played in sunglasses to hide the fact."
• This was originally a single that Harry Robinson made with Jackie Dennis called "Linton Addie." He then turned to the traditional Scottish folk song "100 Pipers", and turned the tune into this chart-topping instrumental, punctuated by stereotypical Scottish phrases. Robinson recalled in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh: "You couldn't have a rock n roll instrumental without someone saying something in it. We wanted a voice to recite a couple of silly couplets. I did it because I'm Scottish, but I overdid the accent, which resulted in Scotland thinking it must be a Sassenach. When we heard the playback, we fell about laughing and couldn't play anything for 15 minutes. The engineer couldn't get the bass right when the sound was transferred to disc, and he wanted us to re-do it. A lot of record-buyers complained because if you used a lightweight needle, it jumped off the disc because of the tremendous bass parts. It was banned in certain factories because of its pounding sound: it made the workers want to smash the tools up."
• Harry Robinson, who died in 1996 later performed on Millie's "My Boy Lollipop" and provided the arrangements for a host of people, including The Seekers, Serge Gainsbourg, Nick Drake (including "River Man") and Sandy Denny. Among many other projects, Robinson also composed a national anthem for Zambia.