Reaching over nine million listeners at its peak,[1] it generated several Top 20 hits in the music charts in Germany, thanks to the impressionist talents of its creator, Elmar Brandt, as well as enough controversy over the show's good taste for it to receive newspaper coverage around the globe, despite the limited international appeal of German political humor.
The most famous segments of these programmes were Elmar Brandt's rewrites of well-known tunes with new, satirical lyrics, which he sang in an imitation of the voice of Gerhard Schröder, who at that time was Chancellor of Germany.
The most successful of these was Der Steuersong (en: The Tax-Song), which reached the number one spot in Germany and Austria in 2002, and went double platinum in 2004, having sold over a million copies.
The song was accompanied by a video, in which an unflattering Spitting Image style puppet of Schröder stole coins from a charity collection tin, and medicine from the sick.
During the run-up to the 2005 German federal elections, a duet was released between Brandt as Schröder and Onken as Merkel, entitled Im Wahlkampf vor mir (Zonenmädchen) (en: Ahead of Me in the Polls (Girl from the East)) and set to the tune of Im Wagen vor mir fährt ein junges Mädchen by Hans Blum.