Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

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"Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" is a song and 1979 single by Ian Dury & The Blockheads, written by the singer and Chas Jankel and was number 1 in the UK popular music charts in Januray 1979.

Originally released on the Stiff Records single Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick / There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards the song was recorded in The Workhouse Studio on the Old Kent Road, London, the same place Dury's debut album New Boots And Panties!! had been recorded. Jankel often re-tells a story that after recording it he phoned his mother and told her 'I've just recorded my first number one'.

While not a hit in the U.S, it sold 979,000 copies in the UK. Recently its popularity was boosted by its appearance in a 2006 British advertisement for Capital One.

The B-side was "There's Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards", also written by Dury and Russel Hardy, his co-writer from his time in the pub-rock band Kilburn & The Highroads.

Preceded by: "YMCA" by Village People

UK number one single January 7, 1979

Succeeded by: "Heart of Glass" by Blondie