Crazy Frog leaps into top spot on UK charts

The Crazy Frog has enjoyed unparalleled success in its first week of sales and the CD single has proved just as popular as the ringtone, which is equally loved and loathed by sections of the public.

The single, which combines the grating noises of the Crazy Frog with Axel F, the theme tune to Beverly Hills Cop, has been outselling its nearest challenger in the singles chart, Coldplay's Speed of Sound, by around four copies to one.

The tune was devised by Jamster's parent company Jamba!, and is the brainchild of its managing director, Oliver Samwer, who made his first fortune by setting up an online auction website that was a forerunner to eBay.

Mr Samwer, 34, who lives in Berlin, has likened the appeal of his products to teenage obsessions with bands such as the Beatles in the Sixties.

However, Jamster has been a victim of its own success, as it faces a backlash from angry parents who say that the advertising targets children. The adverts have been appearing on some music TV channels as many as seven times an hour at peak times.

The Advertising Standards Authority has received more than 400 complaints about the aggressive blitz of digital and satellite channels in promoting the song.

HMV spokesman, Gennaro Castaldo, said the super-annoying tune's success was down to "its novelty appeal and the massive amount of exposure it is getting".

Mr Castaldo said: "Kids obviously find it cute and cool but students and office workers seem to be drawn to its rather kitsch, ironic appeal."

It is believed the song was originally the idea of a Swedish teenager whose efforts at imitating a two-stroke motor scooter made his friends laugh. It was then posted on a website, where another Swede, a graphic designer, heard it and drew a cartoon to match the sound.

A group of Germans then set it to music and sold it to Jamster, a German company.

The success of The Crazy Frog - the first ringtone to hit No 1 - is another example of the changing face of popular music, where listening habits of young people have changed significantly.

At the beginning of April, the UK chart was modified to include downloaded music, for the first time. The change was made because of declining CD single sales and a growing market for legal downloads.

Since the change, the official UK singles chart has doubled the number of hits which comprise its weekly countdown.

The Crazy Frog is not the first novelty record to get success in the UK singles chart.

In 2002, three Spanish sisters, Las Ketchup, got to No 1 with The Ketchup Song, a Mediterranean-holiday novelty single.

A year earlier, the cartoon character Bob the Builder became the first fictional figure to have more than one No 1 single, with a remake of Mambo Number Five enjoying a week at the top of the charts, nine months after the character's debut hit, Can We Fix It, enjoyed a three-week spell at the top of the chart.

In 1997, the theme tune from the children's television programme The Teletubbies spent two weeks at No 1, while, perhaps worst of all, Mr Blobby achieved four weeks at the top of the charts in 1994.