<P> The song is about a dispute between a workman digging a hole and an officious busybody wearing a bowler hat . This exemplifies British class conflict of the era and Cribbins switches between a working class Cockney accent, in which he drops his aitches, and a middle class accent for the gentleman in the bowler hat . </P> <P> Don't dig it there, dig it elsewhere . You're digging it round and it ought to be square . The shape of it's wrong, it's much too long, And you can't put a hole where a hole don't belong . </P> <P> Noël Coward, who wrote many comic songs himself, chose the record as one of his Desert Island Discs . He said: "I think the only one I would never get sick of is' Hole in the Ground', because I could translate it into French as I walked up and down on the beach ." </P>

Who sang there i was digging a hole