"Living Doll" is a song written by Lionel Bart

Lionel Bart

Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...

 made popular by Cliff Richard

Cliff Richard

Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

 and the Shadows

The Shadows

The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...

 (then still The Drifters) in 1959. It has topped the UK charts twice; in its original version and a new version recorded in 1986 in aid of Comic Relief.

• 1959 Worldwide Sales: 2,000,000
• 1986 Worldwide Sales: 1,600,000

1959 version

The song was originally recorded in 1959 by Cliff Richard and the Drifters and produced by Norrie Paramor

Norrie Paramor

Norrie Paramor was a British record producer, composer, arranger, and orchestral conductor.Although the term "producer" was not in circulation at the time Paramor started producing records , he effectively began this role in 1952 when he became Recording Director for EMI's Columbia...

. It peaked at #1 on the UK singles chart for six weeks from July 1959, selling over a million copies in the process. The song won Bart an Ivor Novello Award for best song. It was Richard's first US hit single reaching #30 on the Billboard Hot 100

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

. It is featured in the film Serious Charge and was also released on the Serious Charge 7" EP (Columbia SEG 7895).

The song is performed by Cliff Richard (vocals), Hank Marvin

Hank Marvin

Hank Brian Marvin is an English guitarist, best known as the lead guitarist for The Shadows. The group, which primarily performed instrumentals, was formed as a backing band for vocalist Cliff Richard...

 (guitar), Bruce Welch

Bruce Welch

Bruce Welch OBE, is an English guitarist, songwriter, producer and singer, best known as a member of The Shadows.-Biography:...

 (guitar), Jet Harris

Jet Harris

Jet Harris, MBE was an English musician. He was the bass guitarist of The Shadows until April 1962, and had subsequent success as a soloist and as a duo with the drummer Tony Meehan....

 (bass) and Tony Meehan

Tony Meehan

Daniel Joseph Anthony "Tony" Meehan was a founder member of the British group The Shadows with Jet Harris, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch...

 (drums).

1986 version

In 1986, 27 years after the first release, alternative comedy

Alternative comedy

Alternative comedy is a term that originated in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era, and typically avoids relying on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes with punch lines. Patton Oswalt defines it as "comedy where the...

 group The Young Ones

The Young Ones (TV series)

The Young Ones is a British sitcom, first broadcast in 1982, which ran for two series on BBC2. Its anarchic, offbeat humour helped bring alternative comedy to television in the 1980s and made household names of its writers and performers...

 approached Richard to record a comic version of "Living Doll" for the Comic Relief charity. Despite the apparent contrast between the anarchic comedians and the clean cut Richard, he agreed and their version again topped the UK singles chart, for three weeks from March 1986. Shadows guitarist Hank Marvin

Hank Marvin

Hank Brian Marvin is an English guitarist, best known as the lead guitarist for The Shadows. The group, which primarily performed instrumentals, was formed as a backing band for vocalist Cliff Richard...

 was reunited with Richard on this recording for the first time since 1975. The pairing was not entirely surprising as one of The Young Ones characters - Rick - is a devoted Cliff Richard fan - which led to many jokes about Richard being made during the show's run, and both the name of the show and the opening theme were based on another of Richard's many hit singles.

Chart performance

Country	Peak position 1959 version	Peak position 1986 version
Australia Kent Music Report The Kent Music Report was a weekly record chart of Australian music singles and albums which was compiled by music enthusiast David Kent from May 1974 through to 1998...		1
Netherlands Dutch Top 40 The Dutch Top 40 is a weekly music chart, which started as the "Veronica Top 40", because the offshore radio station Radio Veronica was the first to introduce it. It remained "The Veronica Top 40" until 1974, when the station was forced to stop broadcasting...		1
United Kingdom UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...	1	1
United States Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...	30