In the sixties, Mike Berry was lead singer of the pop group Mike Berry and the Outlaws and amongst a handful of hits he had a UK number one with ’A Tribute to Buddy Holly’. He is better known however for his appearances as Mr Spooner in the British sitcom Are You Being Served (where he aptly quit his job to become a pop-star in the last ever episode). In 1985 Mike teamed up with Mikro-Gen to record a musical interpretation of their arcade adventure game Everyone’s a Wally.

Mike’s cheeky-chappy-cockney-sparrow style is very similar to Chas and Dave and was an ideal choice for a game that was even more working-class than Manic Miner and Monty Mole put together. The game was the first of its genre to allow the player to control a number of different characters and each unique personality was incorporated into the tune. But the song was more than just a round the piano cockney boozer singalong, it actually complemented the game-play by giving the player tips on how to complete the puzzles. This gave even more incentive to buying the original game rather than loading it from a c90 home-made compilation of ill-gotten copies. With plenty of humorous one liners and a fantastically catchy chorus, Everyone’s a Wally may not be the kind of song that you would want to hear at the local night club, but as a nostalgic look back at 80’s Britain it is perfect compliment to an absolute gem of a game.

A year later Melbourne House released their adventure game Dodgy Geezers, which included a similarly styled song recorded by programmers Trevor Lever and Peter Jones. Whilst is was an amusing enough attempt, it couldn’t compare with Berry’s effort and Lever and Jones summed it nicely on the games inlay when the described it as "a diabolical song on the flipside of the tape".

Dodgy Geezers (Lever & Jones)