Songfacts®:

• In 1974 Wayne Bickerton, the then head of A&R at Polydor, and his songwriting partner Tony Waddington hired session men to play a song they'd written, "Sugar Baby Love." Bickerton recalls in 1000 UK #1 Hits, "We had Paul DaVinci singing in that incredibly high falsetto voice and then a vocal group sings 'Bop-shu-waddy' over and over for about 3 minutes. Gerry Shury, who did the string arrangements, said, 'This is not going to work: you can't have a vocal group singing 'Bop-shu-waddy' non stop.' A lot of people said the same thing to us and the more determined I became to release it. The record was dormant for six or seven weeks and then we got a break on Top Of The Pops and it took off like a rocket and sold 6 million copies worldwide. Gerry said to me, 'I'm keeping my mouth shut and will concentrate on conducting the strings.'"
  
  Rubettes guitarist Tony J Thorpe recalls in the same book, "We were very lucky to get on Top Of The Pops. We were only at number 51, but the work permits for Sparks fell through at the last minute and we got on in their place."
• The Rubettes went on to have a number of other British hits during the mid-'70s, including "Tonight," "Juke Box Jive," "I Can Do It" and the country-rock ballad "Baby, I Know." Their songs were mostly written by the same Bickerton-Waddington songwriting team. The Rubettes trademark was wearing white suits with matching cloth caps.
• This was featured in the 1995 film Muriel's Wedding.