The song was originally written in 1983 by Theosaratantapondupadopoulos Krazkantikonroupakalpantaparapalimundocastropalis, a little known member of Gorumgouma, the Athenian band who (as you all know) performed admirably for Greece in the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest, coming in 15th place out of 16 (the wooden spoon that year went to their neighbours Albania who's singer, incidentally, was arrested last year for performing illegal sex change operations on unsuspecting American tourists). The song was, therefore written in Greek.
A junior member within the Australian World Cup organising committee, on holiday in Cyprus in 1991, heard the song on local radio. It had re-entered the charts in that country following it's use in a popular television advertisement for Zap! washing up detergent. Having received backing from the rest of the committe, the song was translated into English. This is perhaps why there some very poor grammatical errors in the final version (the translation was performed absolutely word-for-word), such as "World top of on I am". It is believed that they perhaps employed Yoda to perform this translation.
The next task was to find someone to sing the song. The committee aproached Australia's most popular musicians of the time - the ex-Neighbours duo of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. Unfortunately it was realised at the pre-recording stage that neither could actually SING, so this idea was torpedoed.
Next, they approached the only other Australian singer who had any kind of success outside the musical capitals that are Wagga Wagga and Woranbatoumba - the great Rolf Harris. However, just a week earlier Rolf had slipped a disc in his back. This had occurred due to him SIMULTANEOUSLY playing an over-sized didgery-doo, strumming the banjo for the Duchess of York, recording an episode of his (highly successful early '90s) children's television art program and all this whilst singing "Advance Australia Fair" at the opening ceremony for the new HQ of the King's Cross Residents Association (King's Cross, North London that is, not Sydney- the former has twice as many Antipodeans per sq. metre as the latter, according to the latest census figures). Such are the perils of excessive multi-tasking. So this idea was also ditched.
Faced with this, the organisers were forced to approach the only other entertainer from the land down d under who had gained any degree of success outside that country. Dame Edna.
The grand old Dame was the one who actually sung the final version of the song, the one you all heard and loved. Unfortunately, the ICC felt she was not "hip" enough for the "youth" of the day, so performances on television were covered up by being performed by "younger" people.
However the Dame had the last laugh. Throughout the final recording performed by her are dozens of subliminal messages. In fact, if you play the song backwards, the words "Enjoy Possums!" can be distinctly heard during the chorus.
