"Night Boat to Cairo" is a song by British ska/pop band Madness from their debut 1979 album One Step Beyond.... It was written by Mike Barson and Suggs and was also included on the Work Rest and Play EP, which peaked at #6 in the UK music charts. The song was later re-issued as a single in 1993, following the success of the re-issued version of "It Must Be Love", but failed to reach the top 40, peaking at number 56. It was remixed slightly for inclusion on the band's eponymous 1983 album compiled for the USA. The song is featured in the 2011 Wii video game Just Dance 3.

The song is often used by Madness to close live concerts, and "Night Boat" has passed into cockney rhyming slang as a term for a giro, or unemployment benefit cheque.

The song was composed as an instrumental by Barson, but was expanded when Suggs added lyrics. The song has an unusual structure, with a single long verse followed by an even longer instrumental section, heavily sax-based. At one point, after a key change from C to F, the instrumental slows right down and momentarily stops, then the opening notes of the song are repeated before the tempo picks up again. Suggs has described it as "miles of introduction, a couple of verses then miles of instrumental, no chorus and the title isn't even mentioned apart from me shouting it at the beginning. It's an atmosphere with great music and words- of course it IS a song, but not a traditional one."

After the decision to issue the Work Rest and Play EP, a promotional music video was needed. However, there was not enough time to make an effective video before the record was released, so a low-budget karaoke-type video was hastily filmed in a studio instead.

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