Songs about animals, birds and insects have always enjoyed great success.

Everyone knows Nellie The Elephant and Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me A Bow-Wow.

Lita Roza (who sang with Ted Heath's band) took How Much Is That Doggy In The Window? to No 1 on 13 March 1953, hotly pursued by Patti Page's version of the same song, which reached the No 9 spot the following week.

Nina and Frederik's Little Donkey and Ronnie Hilton's Mouse In A Windmill In Old Amsterdam have become big animal favourites, along with Michael Flanders and Donald Swann's A Gnu and the hippopotamus song Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.

Arthur Askey and Burl Ives long ago cornered the market in songs about birds, bugs, frogs and bees.

Arthur's Bee Song, along with others about The Death Watch Beetle, The Seagull And The Ant and many others, were long an integral part of his act.

Big-hearted Arthur Askey became famous between the wars on the BBC show, Band Wagon.

In pantomime, he became renowned for playing the role of dame, being known as bighearted Martha. He also made 14 films and many remember him as the funniest of all the great comedians.

Burl Ives is widely regarded as the greatest folk singer of such classics as Big Rock Candy Mountain, Riders In The Sky and Mule Train, but best known for his interpretation of bug-type songs such as Blue Tail Fly, Boll Weevil, I Know An Old Lady (who swallowed a fly) and his amphibian favourite Mr Froggie (went a-wooing).

My choice would have to be that classic The Teddy Bears' Picnic, albeit the bears are of the soft-toy variety.

-Michael Parker, Brighton