17 May 1986
As my mentor and life coach Hugo Drax would put it: “Not being English, I sometimes find your sense of humour rather difficult to follow”. I was a bit too young at the time to watch Spitting Image’s acidic British political satire. (It was eventually shown on one of Ireland’s two TV channels.) ‘The Chicken Song’, however, is… what, exactly? A parody of ‘Agadoo’ by Black Lace? An irreverent truth-bomb on people having a good time dancing to novelty pop records on holiday? A desperate cash-in on a successful TV show but with none of the elements (political satire, celebrity impersonations, jokes) that made it a success in the first place?
I dare say, once the novelty-record-buying demographic of the UK and Ireland had been and gone, even English people found this cheap, snide record not nearly as funny or subversive as it clearly thinks it is.
