It’s been a struggle to find a Worst Song winner in an era of terrible novelty tunes but I think I’ve found one in Ray Stevens’s execrable 1971 hit Bridget The Midget.

This song has literally nothing going for it. First of all, the video itself is terrible, featuring the kind of primitive animation that might fail to impress a small child raised on Captain Pugwash.

Secondly, Ray Stevens himself – a portly light-entertainment Master of Ceremonies wearing a too-tight red suit, a matching shirt, matching bow tie and a smug smirk.

And well might he smirk, having somehow managed to make it to No.2 in the singles charts with this terrible tune. I wonder whether anyone who bought it at the time would own up to that now. I bet they haven’t played it for nearly half a century.  

In the video, just as you think matters cannot get any worse, he introduces Bridget the Midget herself – an annoying animated figure with an equally annoying speeded-up voice. Then it gets een worse, with the tap-dancing bit. And then it gets worse than that with the arrival of the animated doo-wop backing trio, Strawberry and the Shortcakes.

Not to mention the animated audience member yelling: “I dig it, I really dig it” and Ray putting the animated heckler back in his animated place lest he invade the animated stage.

Ray Stevens – real name Harold Ragsdale – had seven hit singles, alternating middle-of-the-road country-and-western songs like Everything Is Beautiful and Misty with novelty “comedy” numbers like this and the equally regrettable The Streak, which got to No.1.

He’s still at it too – this is his latest very much on-trend effort, The Quarantine Song.