According to the London Daily Mail of January 11, 2012, this was the first Lionel Bart song ever published, and earned him the princely sum of 25 guineas. It was recorded for The Billy Cotton Band Show, a radio program broadcast on the BBC. Bart, who was born Lionel Begleiter, was a composer of songs and musicals. His most famous work is the 1959 production Oliver!. (thanks, Alexander Baron - London, England)
Bart wrote this song for an amateur theater company he worked with called the Unity Theatre. The song is a stab at American culture that had encroached into England, specifically the new coffee bars that were popping up around London.
