Perhaps the first such parody came almost immediately on the heels of Actually itself. When U.K. record producer and media personality Jonathan King began to wage (unsuccessfully) a one-man campaign to convince the world that the Pet Shop Boys' 1987 hit "It's a Sin" had plagiarized Cat Stevens' 1970 release "Wild World," he quickly recorded his own version of the Stevens song with a "PSB-ish" arrangement. The cover of the resulting single featured King himself alongside a non-yawning Cat Stevens head superimposed upon an appropriately tuxedoed body. If you like, you can read a little more about this incident elsewhere on this website.

The British comedy team of Vic and Bob—also known by their last names of Reeves and Mortimer—have been fixtures on U.K. television since around 1990. They've starred in several TV series and specials of their own and have frequently appeared as guests on other shows. At some point along the line they posed for a portrait mimicking the Actually shot, in the process matching both Chris's expression and Neil's yawn more closely than any other similar takeoff.

Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert—half of the great band New Order—have also recorded together as The Other Two. (The name of their duo refers to the fact that the other New Order members, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook, had already released fruits of their own outside projects.) One of their publicity photos, which appeared in an issue of NME (New Musical Express), signified their fellow synthpop/dance hitmakers the Pet Shop Boys. It's a good approximation, though not quite as spot-on as Vic and Bob's.

A 1990 single, "I Never Gave Up," by the anarchic agitprop/agitpop group Chumbawumba was released with packaging that rather cheaply (which wasn't inappropriate considering the band's punkish, highly irreverant philosophy), somewhat ineffectively, but nevertheless obviously parodied the Actually cover. A low point, perhaps, from which things could only get better.

"If I Give You My Number," a 1994 single by the U.K. duo PJ and Duncan—more recently and more popularly known as Ant and Dec—boasted a cover that paid direct tribute to their pop forebears. Despite variance in the form of the cell phone and cap, it was considerably more effective than Chumbawumba's takeoff.

You'd think that more than a decade after it first appeared this image would lose its hold on the collective pop-culture imagination. But that's hardly the case. Now, well into the twenty-first century, the tributes/parodies continue. A Spanish-language Chilean edition of Rolling Stone magazine drew upon the famous PSB shot for the cover of its 2006 "annual review" issue. The guys standing in for Chris and Neil are, respectively, Benjamin Vicuña and Daniel Muñoz, both well-known actors in Chile.

Most recently, in October 2007, the British "automotive humorists" Sniff Petrol employed the Actually iconography when they assumed the guise of the "Pit Stop Boys" to record a parody titled "(It's Just That You Remind Me of) Alain Prost." You can read more about that elsewhere on this website, but their own "PSB photo" demonstrates once again just how enduring this image has proven to be.

Coincidentally, October 2007 also saw the release of a new compilation album of techno/house dance tracks, Secretsundaze Volume 1, by the well-known London club-scene promoters, DJs, and mixers Giles Smith and James Priestley. And—wouldn't you know it?—the album's cover mimics perhaps the single most famous visual image in dance music history since John Travolta struck his unforgettable pose on the cover of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Simply delightful.