Slade had their third of their six number one singles in less than a year when Mama Weer All Crazee Now topped the charts for three weeks in September 1972.

It’s hard to choose but if pressed this, their third No.1, would probably be my favourite Slade single, if only because it seems to the the loudest and most raucous of the lot.

There’s the intro: it fizzes out of the speakers with Dave Hill’s fuzzed-out guitar riff and Noddy Holder’s ear-splitting howl before the drums begin to pound. Then there’s the outro: the handclaps, the whoops and ad-libs, and the reverb on that trancelike mantra: “Mamamamamamamamama…. YEAH!”

Released in August 1972, it was the first single from their third album Slayed? – the one (still in my collection) with that daft cover where they have the band’s name written on their knuckles and thumbs.

It was the first tune entirely written by Jim Lea, the bassist, violinist and keyboard player, who says he was inspired to come up with an anthemic singalong chorus by being at a Chuck Berry concert, where Chuck kept stopping songs to let the crowd sing the words.

Noddy’s lyric was inspired by a gig by Slade themselves, at Wembley Empire Pool, when he surveyed the wreckage in the auditorium afterwards, and imagined how “crazy” the crowd had been that night.

When he put his lyric together with Lea’s tune, he realised his band had hit upon their signature sound: “very raucous, but catchy and pop. Everyone loved it and everyone knew the words.”

Ironically, one man who didn’t know the words was their manager Chas Chandler. When they first played the song to him acoustically, he misheard Noddy singing the original title (“My, My, We’re All Crazy Now”) as “Mama”. Holder and Lea agreed that it actually sounded better like that.

It was also the song where Noddy, whose sideburns had developed a life of their own, first introduced his mirrored top hat, while Hill had gone mad with the glitter and tinfoil.