Songfacts®:

• This was written by Labi Siffre, whose original version reached #14 in the UK in 1971.
• Madness' backing track was recorded in nine hours in a front room studio in a house in Dagenham, Essex.
• The duo of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley produced this track. Langer recalled the bold use of strings on this track in an article by Eric Olsen of Blogcritics Magazine: "We had the strings play pizzicato: 'plink, plink, plink,' which at that time required real musicians. It was quite an experiment and you took a lot of responsibility because you had to pay the bill. Now you can just use a sample."
  
  Winstanley added: "A few years later Trevor Horn told me that he nicked the pizzicato strings idea from us for the first ABC record - that was quite flattering really."
• In 1992 this was re-issued and again it reached the UK Top 10 this time peaking at #6.
• In America this was the follow-up to the band's only Top 10 hit, "Our House." However the Ealing Comedy-influenced music video for this song, which featured the band all running around in undertaker's gear, was not appreciated across the Atlantic and this song only reached #33.
• The video also featured underwater performances from guitarist Chris Foreman and saxophonist Lee Thompson. Foreman recalled to Q Magazine August 2008: "In the pool, I had these lead weights on. I thought I was gonna die. The hire guitar got bent so we got a hairdryer and sent it back. They said, 'The neck's like a banana.' So we had to buy it."
• Labi Siffre made a cameo appearance in the video as a violin player.
• This featured in the 1989 film The Tall Guy.