Top of the hops

Profile: The Crazy Frog ringtone

It's possibly the most annoying phone noise you'll ever hear - but today it's at Number 1

Life as a frog comes with few advantages. One is that you have special, flush-fitting ears that cushion the sound of anti-social croaking, and protect you from the pestilence of the Crazy Frog ringtone. Mother Nature was merciful when she fitted frogkind with its lugs, but humans got no such break.
And, consequently, no escape from this: "A ding ding ding ding dididing ding bing bing pscht, Dorhrm bom bom bedom bem bom bedom bom bum ba ba bom, Bouuuuum bom bom bedahm, Bom be barbedarm, Bbrrrrrimm bbrrrrramm bbbrrrrrrr-rraammmmm ddddddraammm, Bah bah baah baah ba wheeeeeee-eeeee-eeeee!"

It's on the train, in the street, all over the television. And as of today it is top of the charts - the first mobile ringtone ever to reach Number One. How did this happen? The pop cognoscenti have been confidently predicting for months that Coldplay, everyone's favourite gloom-drenched, middle-class niceboys, would seize the top spot with their long-awaited Speed of Sound. Instead we have a singing frog in biker leathers. And there are still seven months until Christmas.

Which leaves plenty of time for the first Crazy Frog murder, Crazy Frog divorce, Crazy Frog unfair dismissal case, and mass outbreak of Crazy Frog phone rage. You used to think that a fly buzzing around the bedroom was irritating? And Loyd Grossman's nasal drawl got on your nerves? They sound like Debussy next to the Crazy Frog, and here's the really grim news. The ringtone takeover of popular music has hardly begun.