“This was my second Michael Jackson parody. It was me going back to the well in a way. It was a few years since my last big hit, and I thought doing a Michael Jackson food-based song was a can’t-miss scenario. As soon as I saw Michael’s Bad video, I got the idea of me trying to go through subway turnstiles as an 800-pound guy in a buckle suit.

“I wrote a song with as many fat jokes as I could cram into it. The video was shot on Michael Jackson’s subway set in Culver City. It took four hours of prosthetic makeup every morning to transform me into the character. We were able to hire a number of plus-sized dancers to play the other gang members. It was very surreal.

“It was a concern for me that Michael might think we were being offensive, but as it turned out, I didn’t get a lot of grief from it. My song was exaggerated but very positive. It’s an anthem for fat people. It's empowering.”