Maniac 2000 turns 25: Top DJ Mark McCabe reveals amazing backstory of Ireland's 'unofficial national anthem'

Legendary DJ Mark McCabe has recalled how his number one hit Maniac 2000 was born - and the moment he embraced it.

Maniac 2000 topped the charts for ten weeks 25 years ago - and has since become 'a cultural phenomenon' that gets people on their feet from nightclubs to sport changing rooms.

It's become a favourite around the world - and nearly banked Mark a £150k fortune. But to this day he says he's become proud of it and what it has become.

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In his podcast Phone Truths with Carl Mullan, sponsored by Sky Mobile, Mark told Carl about the early days of the smash hit that has been performed everywhere from stadiums in Sydney to weddings in Chicago, and from freshers weeks to Electric Picnic.

Mark said: "I was thinking back about that time and phones, and I was a total tech nerd back then, but when Maniac was released that was really only the start of texting each other.

"Technology was still in its infancy, Maniac was released on CD, cassette and vinyl. There was no digital download. It’s hard to believe".

Mark said the genesis of the track came about through performing it at gigs that funded the pirate radio station he was a part of.

He said: “I was performing Maniac at these gigs, we recorded one of them and we started playing it on the radio and people started ringing asking for it."

“It’s just this cultural phenomenon that people lose their minds to. All the way along it hasn’t really been available, it’s been on YouTube, it’s not on Spotify. It’s always been kept as this underground thing that people refer to as the unofficial national anthem. Which is just crazy.”

“People have had great times with that track. It fits with our psyche as Irish people, not taking ourselves too seriously, having a bit of a laugh."

“I used to be really embarrassed about it,". But he added that when he performed it at Electric Picnic in 2015 he realised just how adored the track had become and he ‘stopped being ashamed of it’.

He also told how he received a call from ‘a label putting down an offer for £150,000’ but he never signed a deal despite the success of the song which also has a massive following in the north of England and in Glasgow.

“The UK got wind of it and there was offers coming in - but I didn’t take any of them, it never went… it all kind of fell apart from there,”

Mark recalled owning an ‘088’ phone which was part of the analogue network. He was one of the first 50 people in Ireland to own an iPhone and to this day, he loves keeping up with developments in the technology world and AI.

However when ‘Maniac 2000’ was first released, people were only starting to get to grips with things like texting. There was no way of downloading the track either, but it was through radio request lines that it soared to No. 1 in the Irish charts for 10 weeks.

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