Chris We wanted to make it sound really jolly, so that the lyrics sounded really sick.

Neil There is that quality in The Threepenny Opera anyway. You've got this heroic music and these words about cannibalism and torture. We did a demo of it, and then we had to goto BBC studios in Maid a Vale to record it. It’s a very complicated piece of music and we were smuggling a bit.

Chris The BBC producer was breathing down our necks the whole time being a real irritant.

Neil Luckily Simon Bates was there to smooth things over. And who should be in the studio next door but Richard Colas of The Communards, doing a session with Sandier Shaw. I said, 'Oh, Richard, you can do all this, you're classically trained, just come and play these chords...' Even he found them quite hard, but he very kindly played them into the computer. Anyway, we finished it within the four-hour session. Chris Then it turned out that it wasn't fifty years, after all.

Neil When we were recording I said to the BBC producer, 'Wasn't that in 1928?' He said, 'Yeah'. I said, 'Doesn't that make it sixty years...?' And they'd made this documentary and got David Bowie and Sting and everyone. It was really funny. So they celebrated the sixtieth anniversary instead.