THE hit song We’re Going To Ibiza has hit number one for the third time after becoming an unlikely anti-far right protest song in Austria.

And it has come as a big surprise to the Brighton musician who wrote the original song on which it is based, We’re Going To Barbados.

The Ibiza party anthem, a hit for Eurodance group the Vengaboys in 1999, has become the protest song of the scandal dubbed “Ibizagate” that has now brought down the Austrian government.

A video filmed in 2017 in a villa in Ibiza purports to show Austria’s deputy vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache agreeing to give lucrative public contracts in exchange for favours from a woman posing as a Russian oligarch’s niece.

On Saturday, Strache, the far-right Freedom Party leader, resigned, leading to the collapse of the government.

To celebrate his resignation, a reported 20,000 people gathered outside the Vienna Heldenplatz central square chanting We’re Going To Ibiza.

The following day German comedian Jan Boehmermann posted a YouTube link to the song’s music video on Twitter. It made the song the number one download on iTunes in Austria.

Geraint Hughes, from Brighton, who co-wrote the original, said: “It’s the weirdest thing.

“It’s had great coverage in the international press because of the Austrian government scandal but I don’t think it’s going to turn into physical sales of the record because people are downloading it from iTunes. This is the third time the song has been number one and it’s a bit weird and a bit funny.

“I’ve never been to Austria myself.”

Geraint wrote We’re Going To Barbados in 1975 and it was a number one hit for his band Typically Tropical that summer, selling almost a million copies globally.

The 66-year-old, who lives in Stanmer Park Road, heard of the song’s latest success and contacted co-writer Jeffrey Calvert to tell him.

He said: “He was gobsmacked –he knew nothing about it.”

The duo came up with the catchy song in 1974 after Jeffrey had gone on a Caribbean cruise with his father, returning with his head “full of reggae rhythms and sounds”.

They wrote it in two hours on a rainy afternoon in Ealing with Geraint at the piano and Jeffrey on guitar. It was recorded at the Morgan Recording Studio in Willesden in London with session musicians, including Herbie Flowers on bass.

It became a hit again in 1999 when it topped the charts as We’re Going To Ibiza by the Vengaboys.

Geraint said: “I was never that entranced with the Vengaboys version. It’s a bit cheesy.”