“It’s hard to ignore Mick’s lips when they are staring you right in the face,” recalls John Pasche, whose moment of insight created what is arguably the most famous rock’n’roll branding icon in the world.

Those lubricious lips and leading tongue, redolent of Seventies sleaze, sex, drugs and yet more sex, will be plastered across keychains, T-shirts, lighters, and even babywear once again when the Rolling Stones merchandise bandwagon — sorry, tour — hits Britain next August.

Today design-friendly bands such as Franz Ferdinand can conduct entire interviews about their logos. But none is recognisable from a mere wordless image, and the mighty tongue has proved more popular than the Stones’ later albums.

Many assumed the cartoon lips to be the work of Andy Warhol, after their appearance on the notorious “zip” sleeve of the 1971 Sticky Fingers album that the Pop Art innovator designed. But their true genesis lies in a meeting between Pasche, then a graphic-design student at the Royal College of Art in London, and Mick Jagger after the singer — ever on the lookout for new talent — came to see Pasche’s 1970 final degree show.

“Mick said he wanted a logo for their new record label and showed me a poster of Kali, the goddess of destruction, he picked up in India,” says Pasche.

The artist, however, was transfixed by the rock icon’s lips and created the tongue image. The original artwork went under the hammer at the Cooper Owen’s Music and Silver Screen sale in London on Wednesday. Bidding stopped at £700,000 — just short of the reserve — so it’s still up for grabs if you’re interested.

In a 1971 interview in Rolling Stone, Keith Richard said of the logo: “Slowly and slowly, we’ve been finding the right people to do the right thing. Like now we’ve got the Kali tongue. Sometimes it’ll take up the whole label on a record, maybe slowly it’ll turn to a c**k, I don’t know yet.”

Pasche recalls its fitness for its task differently. “It symbolised freedom, rebellion and — of course — there is a sexual connotation,” he says. “Plus it could be easily reproduced, which has helped it to stand the test of time.”

The lips have undergone endless incarnations since the Seventies, including a sailor’s tattoo for the 1981 album Tattoo You and kinky spikes for 1994’s Voodoo Lounge. The 2005 ‘Chipped’ model has been created by London agency Michael Nash Associates. Jagger was no easy taskmaster, deriding Pasche’s first effort before declaring himself delighted with the revised result.

Nor could Pasche, now 60, have known his work’s eventual value. He was paid £50 for the design, which took a week to complete, and a further £200 in 1972 in recognition of its success. He also received£26,000 when the Stones bought out the copyright in 1984, shortly before a new team of promoters turned the band into the money-making monster which has raked in £300 million from logo-spattered merchandise.

“I always found Mick a straightforward guy — and an astute businessman,” Pasche says. Pasche isn’t really hurting, though — he has enjoyed a successful career designing sleeves for the Who, Paul McCartney and creating the famous cover of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds soundtrack.

When aspiring Jaggers seek help on creating a logo for life, Pasche counsels consistency. “So many bands change their logos — even the Beatles did. If something is successful, stick with it.”