Thank You Baked Potato

Album: Single release only (2020)
Charted: 34
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Songfacts®:

  • English comedian and actor Matt Lucas recorded this song during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic to raise money for the FeedNHS campaign. The fundraising initiative is aiming to raise $1 million to get daily hot, healthy meals to National Health staff.
  • The song is a reworked version of Lucas' "The Baked Potato Song," which he sang on the comedy gameshow Shooting Stars. That version featured Lucas duetting with a baked potato, where the singing vegetable delivered such life lessons as "Do be good, don't be bad" and "Do be happy, don't be sad."
  • Lucas revisited the tune after seeing footage of people socializing and ignoring the COVID-19 lockdown. "I was just trying to think of a way of helping to spread the message rather than the virus, and I thought, if I can connect with kids, then maybe the kids can tell their parents," he told the BBC. "I was sat at my piano and I just remembered the baked potato song."
  • Lucas rewrote the song to incorporate messages about how to avoid spreading and catching COVID-19, "'Baked Potato' is always giving good advice and the new advice in the new version of the song is about washing your hands, staying indoors and only going to grocery stores," he explained.
  • Matt Lucas has had UK chart success before. In 2007, he teamed up with The Proclaimers and fellow-comedian Peter Kay for a new version of The Scottish duo's song "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)." Released in aid of the charity Comic Relief, it topped the UK chart. Lucas also co-starred in the video for Blur's 1995 UK chart-topper "Country House."
  • Matt Lucas wrote a 32-page children's picture book of the same title based on the song. Published on May 4, 2020, it finds the sage spud doling out more life lessons for the kiddies.

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