“Yes we can!”: How Barack Obama almost facilitated a Bob The Builder and Bruce Springsteen collab

Bruce Springsteen and Bob The Builder: two giants in their respective fields – blue collar rock n’ roll and, er, construction – but rarely seen together. Yet crazy as it may sound they once – almost – made a record together. According to Neil Morrissey, anyway.

The actor is best known for his roles in Men Behaving Badly and Waterloo Road, but he was also the voice of Bob, the titular hero of the CBeebies programme. In a new interview with the Guardian, Morrissey revealed how the Bruce collab came close to becoming a reality. The crucial link would have been... Barack Obama.

“When Obama came into office and started to say ‘Yes we can’ all the time, I said: ‘Here’s an opportunity – we could phone up Bruce Springsteen and see if he wants to record a version,’” Morrissey revealed, before confirming that the idea was quickly shot down.

“But Hit Entertainment, who owned the rights, weren’t biting. I don’t think they wanted Bob to get in any way political.“

A pity, you have to say. After all Springsteen and Bob are in many ways natural bedfellows. Bruce has spent over half a century hymning the lives of ordinary working men, and Bob actually is that working man. It would have been a perfect fit!

Bob the Builder Theme Song | CBeebies - YouTube

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Springsteen might have enjoyed a long and illustrious career, but Bob has something the Boss is now unlikely to achieve this late in his career: a UK Number One. Two, in fact.

The first of those infamously beat Westlife to top the 2000 Christmas chart. Elsewhere in the interview Morrissey recalled how the idea of a Bob single came about: “The TV show was going bonkers all around the world. By the time it came to the end of 2000, someone said: ‘Why don’t we re-record the theme tune as a single?’ We didn’t think anything would come of it, even though it was a lot of fun,”

“Then Chris Evans kept playing it on the Virgin breakfast show, which gave it a massive push. It entered the charts at Number Two, then knocked Stan by Eminem off Number One the week after – for which I’m sure he’s never forgiven me. Then it stayed at Number One for Christmas, beating What Makes a Man by Westlife.”

Can We Fix It? went platinum and incredibly (given it only came out in December) ended up as 2000’s biggest selling single and thus the recipient of an award at the following year’s Ivor Novellos.

Morrissey remembers the evening well: “I was sitting between Annie Lennox and Stevie Wonder when they opened the envelope, and Bob the Builder was announced as the winner of the bestselling single of the year. All I could hear was Pete Townshend who was sitting somewhere behind me, going: ‘What the fuck is this shit?’ You can’t argue with that.”