‘I didn’t think it was annoying enough’: how Spitting Image made The Chicken Song

‘I couldn’t get the bloody music out of my head’ … The Chicken Song, which spent three weeks at No 1. Photograph: Vinyls/Alamy

Philip Pope, music

I was in parody band the Hee Bee Gee Bees with Angus Deayton and Michael Fenton Stevens. Our first single, Meaningless Songs (In Very High Voices) – written with Richard Curtis – got to No 2 in Australia. We joked that we were big down under. John Lloyd was producing Not the Nine O’Clock News and asked if he could use our songs, but we wanted to keep them for ourselves. Then when John started Spitting Image, he said: “How do you feel about being musical director?”