[3] Coogan told the NME that the song had been loosely based on the theme from a children's TV programme with ghosts and a pantomime horse.

[6] The group's drummer, Roland Kerridge, played the song's drum pattern on the Simmons SDX, whose MIDI data was transferred into the Notator sequencing software.

[7] The song reached number 18 on the UK Singles Chart,[2] and earned the band appearances on BBC's Top of the Pops.

[6] Frontman Martin Coogan told an interviewer that the group knew they would "achieve a degree of success" with the song and "that it would open doors for the band.

He described their entrance into the top 20 as "a Trojan Horse situation", as the group's subsequent album, Two Sides, contains "deeper songs" with more "heavyweight" lyrics that contrast with the 'gimmickry' of "Can You Dig It?"

and the follow-up, "And Then She Smiles", signalled a lack of new material from the group, concerns which Radio 1 DJ and Wales on Sunday contributor Simon Mayo says would be eased by the band's subsequent album, Two Sides, on which they are included.

Steve Woof, head of EMI's range marketing, commented that after Vodafone licensed the song, it gave the label "the perfect reason" to create a mid-price Best of the Mock Turtles compilation album.

"[15] The Gavin Report critic Linda Ryan, in her 1990 review of Turtle Soup, wrote that the song was one of several on the album which "could be radio smashes if given a chance.

"[16] Reviewing the 1991 single, Sounds critic Tim Peacock called it "another well-established pop gemstone" which had "lost little in translation" through being re-recorded.

[17] Record Mirror singles reviewer Robin Smith described it as "near perfect pop with chunky chords and a kiss of a chorus to hum all the way home.

[20] In his review of the same album, Q critic Robert Sandall praised it as "the best rock single of the year", describing it as a "entrancingly tuneful, head-to-toe tapper".

[23] Writing in 2003, British columnist James Masterton commented that the song was "[t]he fruits of a long touring career" which began in the mid-1980s and said it is "right up there with Ride's 'Twisterella' as the closest the early 90s 'baggy' sound ever got to pure pop, a shoegazing hit that it was possible to get drunk and stupid to – especially when the guitar solo kicked in.