Unfortunately the question is being asked a few months too late. Fred would have known all the answers. Presumably one of the Liverpool early crowd wrote Johnny Todd in the 50s, Stan Kelly, one of the Spinners, Jacqui and Bridie? And presumably they set it to a local version of 'Ally bally bee/Coulters Candy'. Curiously it doesn't feature in any of my copious indexes so I'm presuming it hasn't been around that long.

I realise this doesn't answer the question being asked, and that has been answered anyway, but what of the origins?