"The Teapot Song" is a song describing the heating and pouring of a teapot

Teapot

A teapot is a vessel used for steeping tea leaves or a herbal mix in near-boiling water. Tea may be either in a tea bag or loose, in which case a tea strainer will be needed, either to hold the leaves as they steep or to catch the leaves inside the teapot when the tea is poured...

 or tea kettle. The song was originally written by George Harold Sanders and Clarence Z. Kelley and published in 1939.Ronnie Kemper is the singer who first sang this song
and is represented in this photograph.

Creation

Clarence Kelley and his wife ran a dance school for children, which taught the "Waltz Clog", a popular and easy-to-learn tap routine. This routine, however, proved too difficult for the younger students to master. To solve this problem, George Sanders wrote The Teapot Song, which required minimal skill and encouraged natural pantomime

Pantomime

Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...

. Both the song and its accompanying dance, the "Teapot Tip", became enormously popular in America and overseas.

Song Text

Though many variations have arisen over the years, the popular song text are as follows (dance motions in parentheses):

First verse:

I'm a little teapot,

Short and stout,

Here is my handle (one hand on hip),

Here is my spout (other arm out with elbow and wrist bent),

When I get all steamed up,

Hear me shout,

Tip me over and pour me out! (lean over toward spout)
Second verse:

I'm a clever teapot,

Yes, it's true,

Here's an example of what I can do,

I can turn my handle into a spout, (switch arms)

Tip me over and pour me out!

Cultural references

Featured as a haunted rhyme that the villain, Andre Linoge, psychically transmits throughout Stephen King

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

's "Storm of The Century" TV movie (1999). The song is also sung in another Stephen King movie "Rose Red" (2002) by the ghost of the child character April Rimbauer.

Referenced in the Internet technology standards paper RFC 2324, an April Fools' document that describes the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol

Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol

The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol is a protocol for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots.HTCPCP is specified in the jocular RFC 2324, published on 1 April 1998. Although the RFC describing the protocol is an April Fools' Day joke, it specifies the protocol accurately enough...

. One part defines Hypertext Transport Protocol status code 418 to mean "I'm a teapot". This occurs when an attempt to brew coffee with a teapot is made, and the resulting entity body (the contents of the page displayed by the browser) "MAY be short and stout".

Tim Brooke-Taylor

Tim Brooke-Taylor

Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor OBE is an English comic actor. He became active in performing in comedy sketches while at Cambridge University, and became President of the Footlights club, touring internationally with the Footlights revue in 1964...

 from The Goodies

The Goodies (TV series)

The Goodies is a British television comedy series of the 1970s and early 1980s. The series, which combines surreal sketches and situation comedy, was broadcast by BBC 2 from 1970 until 1980 — and was then broadcast by the ITV company LWT for a year, between 1981 to 1982.The show was...

(1970s) would say the first line while miming the actions sometimes when in a panic. The Goodies

The Goodies on record

The Goodies on record is about The Goodies' releases on LP and CD-LP albums:The Goodies released four albums and a number of singles during the 1970s, as well as a various greatest hits compilations on both vinyl and CD...

 also recorded a pop song titled "I'm A Teapot."

Season 1 Episode 4 of Friday the 13th: The Series (episode entitled "A Cup of Time") features the song as sung by sinister elderly lady come rock star "Lady Die" played by Hilary Shepard Turner.

In QI (Season G, Episode 1, "Garden") Stephen Fry puts both hands on his hips and changes the rhyme to "I'm a little teapot, short and stout, here is my handle, oh bugger I'm a sugar bowl". A similar joke, "I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my... handle... Gosh, I'm a sugar bowl." was used in the original Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

 cast skit "Gidget Goes to Shock Therapy".

The songs is referenced in Abe Lincoln Must Die! the 4th of 6 episodes of Sam & Max Save the World

Sam & Max Save the World

Sam & Max Save the World is a graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games. The game was originally released as Sam & Max: Season One before being renamed in early 2009. Save the World was developed in episodic fashion, comprising six episodes that were released for Microsoft Windows...

.

In one from Ed, Edd 'n Eddy episodes, Ed says the first four lines of the song.