Songfacts®:

• This Steve Marriott-penned song has a traditional East End of London Music Hall sound. Keyboardist Ian McLagan recalled to Uncut magazine: "When Steve came in with this it was slower. We started taking the piss out of it while he was out of the room. The 'Root-ti-doo-ti-di-day' thing stop and he laughed when he came back in and heard us. So we cut it like that. It was a piss take!"
• Marriott sung much of the song in a greatly exaggerated cockney accent. Drummer Kenney Jones told Uncut: "Steve had been a child actor, he was the first Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's Oliver in the West End. He brought back that theatricality to this."
• Marriott was against his manager Andrew Loog Oldham's decision to release this as a single and that was one reason why he left the group shortly afterwards. Jones recalled to Uncut: "We were on tour in Germany, picked up Melody Maker and this was a hit! Andrew had released it without our knowledge, like 'My Mind's Eye.' So this dragged us back into poppy-land. We wanted to be known for being as good as the Claptons of this world. We wanted a tougher image. It wasn't a fair representation of Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake.
• The song features various sound effects including crowd shouts, chirping birds, surf, and church bells. If you listen closely, you can hear a loo being flushed just after Marriott sings, "while you flush out the moon."
• The original release came in an actual circular metal tin, which proved too expensive to manufacture and had a habit of rolling off shelves; it was quickly replaced by a cardboard replica.The Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake album's unique circular sleeve was based on a tin of Nut Brown Flake tobacco produced by Ogdens of Liverpool. "We're sitting around, and everyone was rolling up with a packet of Rizlas," remembered Kenny Jones to Mojo magazine. "We just looked at the front of the tin: 'OK, we'll call it Ogden's. But we'll call it 'nut gone,' because it makes your nuts go when you smoke it.'"
  
  The original release came in an actual circular metal tin, which proved too expensive to manufacture and had a habit of rolling off shelves; it was quickly replaced by a cardboard replica.
  
  A subsequent ad campaign underlined the concept, selling the album as "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake manufactured by Small Faces. Cool, clean, satisfying. Firmly packed. Luxury strength. In the unique round packet."
  
  The artwork was produced by Nick Tweddell and Pete Brown, art school friends of keyboardist Ian McLagan, with album cover illustration by Harry Willock.