Mah Nà Mah Nà

On its own it was a minor radio hit in the United States and in Britain, but became better known internationally after it was used by The Muppets and on The Benny Hill Show.

[citation needed] Sesame Street producer Joan Ganz Cooney heard the track on the radio and decided it would be a perfect addition to the show.

Its first Sesame Street performance was by Jim Henson, Frank Oz and Loretta Long (Susan) on the fourteenth episode of the show, broadcast on November 27, 1969.

It was performed by a band called Marc 4 (four session musicians from the RAI orchestra) and the lead part was sung by Italian singer/composer Alessandro Alessandroni and his wife Giulia.

During its 1–15 September 1969 run on the WLS 890 Hit Parade, the surveys erroneously credited the record to someone named Pete Howard.

[15] Giorgio Moroder released a version in 1969 under the pseudonyms "The Great Unknowns" (UK 45) and the "Stop Studio Group" (French 45).

The otherwise silent bits featured Red and another performer, dressed as moon creatures, playing with equipment left behind by the Apollo program astronauts.

: GRT 20003), released after the initial success of Sesame Street; it is purportedly sung by a fuzzy Muppet lookalike, who is pictured on the sleeve.

In 1984, Odessa comic and pantomime group Maski debuted on television with their short theatrical performance "Vocal duet" (Russian: Вокальный дуэт) for Vokrug smekha comedy TV program.

In 2003, several cast members perform their version in the opening scene of episode 1, season 2 of the UK series The Office.

A sketch in the final episode of Jam in 2000 features a scene where two strangely dressed characters, one carrying a clarinet, sing the song where and when police are trying to find a dead body.

[20] The Mexican department store chain Sanborns used a version of this song for their animated commercials featuring the "Tecolotes" (Owl) family mascots.

As with the signature "Yakety Sax" instrumental on the end of each show, the implementation of "Mah Na Mah Na" on Benny Hill was used to great effect to reflect the comedy action of particular sketches — notably the ones transitioning into slapstick mode, providing the backdrop of the story of the moment, most often sped up and (mostly) with no audible dialogue.

The original recordings of the instrumental medley often featured vocals by Benny Hill's backing chorus, The Ladybirds.

However, as there were numerous recordings and renditions of the "Benny Hill Medley" throughout the entire Thames run, some versions featured other female vocalists (after The Ladybirds departed the show) while the rest of them were otherwise completely instrumental.

The female characters – now called the Snowths[24] (originally spelled "Snouths", as a portmanteau of "snout" and "mouth" since their mouth also served as their noses), both performed by Muppeteer veteran Frank Oz – would shake their heads in apparent disapproval whenever the male character began singing the scat portion of the song.

The single from the album, "Halfway Down the Stairs", reached the top Ten in the UK charts – and its B side was "Mah Na Mah Na" – making the song appear three times in the charts at the same time, albeit as a B side, the Piero Umiliani version and also a track on the album.

The later Muppet TV series Muppets Tonight (1996–1998) revisited it in a sketch with Sandra Bullock where Kermit the Frog visits a doctor to complain about weird things that happen to him whenever he says the word phenomena, namely the Snowths suddenly appear with musical accompaniment to sing their part of the song.

In the Muppets version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" at 00:02:25, the Snowths make a cameo appearance, singing the titular lyric.

It was featured in the 2005 pilot of the sitcom Committed where Marni attempted to get her date to sing a duet with her in a restaurant, and continued to appear in the background in later episodes as her ringtone.

In the 2011 episode "The Firefly" of Fringe, the song was playing on a record player in Walter Bishop's home while he was creating a formula to restore the missing pieces of his brain—pieces which were surgically removed years before in an agreement with William Bell.

At the BBC's Children in Need 2011 telethon, Kermit and Miss Piggy introduced a performance of the song, which featured many stars of British television, including Harry Hill, Noel Edmonds and Gary Lineker.

In 2017, it served as the soundtrack for a Ford Explorer commercial, "For What Matters Most," in which a father and daughter make repeated trips to a hardware store while building a "Pinewood derby" car.