Jankel relates that the music was inspired by a funky piano part near the end of "Wake Up and Make Love with Me", the opening track on Dury's 1977 debut album New Boots and Panties!!

[10] Dury mentioned a number of origins for his lyrics, including claiming that he had written them up to three years earlier and it had just taken him all that time to realise their quality.

Blockheads guitarist John Turnbull gives a different account, claiming the lyrics were written while on tour in America six months prior to the song's recording and that he was still adjusting in-studio.

Ian's typed manuscript, which differs only slightly from the later recorded version and with hand written notes about arrangement and instrumentation ('drums and fuzz bass doing Roy Buchanan volume trick' after first chorus, for example), was posted to a friend in September of that year.

The manuscript, complete with handwritten annotations, was reproduced in Hallo Sausages, the book of Dury's lyrics compiled by his daughter Jemima.

[citation needed] 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!!

The song was recorded live with all the Blockheads placed in different positions in the studio's live area, with Jankel playing a Bechstein grand piano, Mickey Gallagher playing the Hammond organ, and Dury sat on a stool in the centre singing into a hand-held microphone.

Still, in the end I suppose all these blemishes give the track a certain character, and if people do talk about the bass then that suggests they can hear it.

On 27 January 1979, however, Turnbull, Watt-Roy and drummer Charley Charles were waiting outside the Gaumont State Cinema, Kilburn, London, listening to a car radio when it was announced that "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" was the new number one.

Dury was on holiday in Cannes, and was at the beach when the hotel staff brought him a bottle of champagne and told him the news.

The promotional video for the single was made by Laurie Lewis, a friend of Dury's from Walthamstow Art School who had been studying film-making.

[18] The B-side was "There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards", written by Dury and Russell Hardy, his co-writer from their time in the pub-rock band Kilburn and the High Roads.