I don’t know why I know “You Sexy Thing” but it feels like one of those songs that’s always been around. I had never thought about it much until the last few years when I started thinking about how much of a banger it is.

I think “You Sexy Thing” appeared in my world around 1997 because it was in “The Full Monty”. I’ve never seen the film but I think it sparked a revival for the song. “Sex on the Beach” was out around that time and I used to sing it. As I was five years old, this resulted in parental intervention and I think it affected my brain. I categorized everything that mentioned sex or the word sexy as explicit. As a result, I thought “You Sexy Thing” was very risque as a child. In truth, the lyrics are fairly tame and almost sweet.

The song itself is iconic. There’s the lazy guitar riff that’s instantly recognisable. There’s loads going on on the bass and there has to be at least two people involved in the percussion. The best thing about “You Sexy Thing” are the vocals from Errol Brown. It ends with my favourite style of song ending, the descent into madness. Errol Brown yelping away, singing random phrases from the song as the music fades out. It always makes me feel like the sound engineer is trying to wind things down because otherwise the song will go on forever.

You can listen to “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate here.