And so on we roll towards the United Kingdom’s seventy-seventh chart topping single. And it’s a song that I’ve never… No, wait… Ah! I know this… We all know this…

Hoots Mon, by Lord Rockingham’s XI (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 28th November – 19th December 1958

Dooooo-doo-doo-do-do… Dooooo-doo-doo-do-do… It’s an intro that smacks of slightly misplaced grandeur, like an aged diva swishing onto the stage before slipping on a banana. We know what follows is going to be absurd. And, oh boy, it is…

Na-nana-na-nana, Na-nana-na-nana, Nana-nanananana… Na-nana-na-nana, Na-nana-na-nana, Nananananananana… Apologies for my woeful attempts to render this riff using the medium of ‘na’s. The minute this starts playing you will know it.

It’s an instrumental, and it’s been a while since we featured an instrumental. I make Winny Atwell’s ‘The Poor People of Paris’ our most recent lyric-less number one, and that was two and a half years back. And it is undeniably catchy. It bores its way in on the first listen and will, I’m sorry, remain for days. And days. And days. There are key-changes, oh yes! And the bass! One of my main complaints about the rock ‘n’ roll numbers we’ve heard so far is that, while there have been some undeniable classics – your ‘Great Balls of Fire’s, your ‘That’ll Be the Day’s and your ‘Rock Around the Clock’s – they’ve all sounded a bit light to modern ears. Listen to this, though, especially through headphones. It fills your ears, in a way that makes it sound like a modern record. Every instrument – the throbbing bass, the slapdash drums, the natty organs – are, if you’ll forgive the cliché, turned up to eleven. And a half.

Actually, I called this an instrumental; but it’s not quite. There are a few words, shouted out above the clatter, foremost among them being: There’s a moose loose aboot this hoose… and It’s a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht… Then there are the Och Ayes! thrown in towards the end and the big Hoots Mon! upon which the record ends. Yes, this is, as they say in theatre circles, The Scottish Number One. All we’re missing is a ‘Help ma Boab!’

The ringleader of Lord Rockingham’s XI was a man named Harry Robinson, a Scot if ever there was one. But, being from Scotland myself, I’m not sure how I feel about this record, and the manner in which it reduces the culture, language and heritage of my homeland to a handful of trite, drunken catchphrases…

Actually, screw it. It’s as catchy as crabs and a hell of a lot more fun than some of the more ‘official’ Scottish songs – ‘500 miles’ (Jings!), ‘Scotland The Brave’ (Crivvens!), ‘Caledonia’ (Shudder… and boak!) In fact, I think that this song I hadn’t ever properly listened to until twenty minutes ago should become our new national anthem, in place of the dirge that is ‘Flower of Scotland’. And when I fulfil my manifest destiny in replacing wee Nicky Sturgeon as First Minister, that’ll be the first act I sign into law.

Anyway, file this record under ‘complete and utter novelty’. It’s no coincidence that it hit the top spot in the weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year. Lord Rockingham’s XI wouldn’t go on to much more success and so for the first time, I think, we have two (semi) one-hit wonders replacing one another at the top of the charts. File this also under ‘British Rock ‘n’ Roll’. It’s something that I’ve long been noting – the gradual handing over of the rock ‘n’ roll baton from the US to the UK – and with this anarchic British track following soppy efforts from The Everly Brothers and The Kalin Twins the transition may be complete.

I’ll finish by reminiscing on how this song stirred in me a long-discarded, foggy memory of a commercial for something or other, way back in the late eighties or early nineties… I knew I knew this song, but I didn’t know how I knew it – if you catch my drift. I suppose whatever it was will be forever lost in the mists of time… Actually, no it won’t. The advert was for Maynard’s Wine Gums, back in 1993. Thanks, internet.