I always thought this song was by Devo until I read Quentin Tarantino’s novel Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, where it makes an appearance.

It’s packed with film and music minutiae including a reference to this song, by Johnny Rivers, and the TV show to which it was apparently a theme.

That show was Secret Agent, the American title of a British TV show called Danger Man. I’ve never seen it, which must explain how I’d never heard of Johnny Rivers either.

Apparently the TV people didn’t like our own theme tune (a proper British instrumental called High Wire) and wanted something more hummable and more American. This was it.

I’m a sucker for that surf guitar twang, especially when it’s played by Link Wray and Duane Eddy. And, it transpires, Johnny Rivers.

The first version of this was by a surf rock band, The Challengers, in 1965, appearing on their TV-themed album The Man From U.N.C.L.E., before The Ventures had a minor hit with an instrumental version.

The songwriters, P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri, shared a manager with Johnny Rivers, which is how the TV theme fell into his hands, after the composers sent CBS a 15-second demo featuring nothing but that guitar riff and a snatch of the chorus.

It was a top three hit in America in 1966 but not here, where I didn’t hear Secret Agent Man until it appeared in a very different version on Devo’s 1979 album Duty Now For The Future.

As for Rivers – John Ramistella until the DJ Alan Freed suggested a name change to something more American – he began performing in his early teens in 1950s Louisiana and surfed the wave of early rock’n’roll alongside Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry without ever matching their mainstream success.

He’s still going strong at the age of 78 and made his last notable appearance at the funeral of Chuck Berry in 2017.