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Spitting Image is 30: Looking back at the satirical puppet classic

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Spitting Image is 30: Looking back at the satirical puppet classic

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A look back on the growth, then decline of the show. The writer also discusses why he believes the show hasn't aged very well.

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It's been a whopping 30 years since Spitting Image first hit our screens on ITV in 1984. The satirical puppet show quickly became one of the most-watched shows of the 1980s and early 1990s.

I wasn't able to fully appreciate the series when it was first on TV. When I watched it in the early '90s as a child, I found it funny mainly because of the silly puppets, even if I didn't quite understand what was going on. But in retrospective viewings, it still holds up as a genuinely hilarious satire of politics, entertainment, sport and general UK culture of the era.

It's quite incredible to think that Spitting Image hasn't been on air since 1996. To put that into perspective, the Spice Girls had only just been unleashed, Tony Blair hadn't been elected yet, and Lorde had only just been born.

As a show that is heavily reliant on topical news of the week in which it aired, it is probably fair to say that Spitting Image hasn't aged brilliantly over the years. While a lot of the content can still be relatable or iconic enough for first-time viewers today to enjoy, there are some elements - especially regarding politics - that could easily go over the heads of people who aren't clued up on the 1980s government. This is probably why you don't see Spitting Image repeats very often, which is a shame, as it is a great document of how satirists saw the world at the time, rather than a retrospective look back decades later.

However, even with scenes that some viewers may not appreciate from a satirical standpoint, most episodes more than make up for it in terms of comedy. The writers were a combination of up and coming and established satire and comedy writers of the time, including creators Peter Fluck and Roger Law ( The Sunday Times), John Lloyd ( Not the Nine O'Clock News), Tony Hendra ( National Lampoon), Rob Grant and Doug Naylor ( Red Dwarf), Richard Curtis, Ben Elton, Ian Hislop, Jo Brand and Steve Punt among many others.

Spitting Image was more than just a satirical comedy series in comparison to equivalent shows today. News-based programmes like Mock the Week or impressionist series like Dead Ringers can verge on the side of merely taking the mickey out of things rather than looking into the deeper context of what they are lampooning.

There are shows today which do act as good satirical comedy series, such as Have I Got News For You, Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe and The Thick of It, but one could argue that there hasn't been a regular satirical comedy series in the style of Spitting Image since perhaps 2DTV in the early 2000s.

John Lloyd recently told BBC Radio 4 that there are not any shows on television today that are truly satirical, saying: " Mock the Week can be very funny, but it's just rude boys, isn't it, poking fun at everybody. In the 1980s it was conviction politics, the Tories particularly, and Spitting Image was a conviction television programme.

"And it's interesting you don't get either now. There are very few conviction politicians it seems to me and very little conviction television."

However, Have I Got News for You star and Spitting Image writer Ian Hislop disagreed somewhat, saying that the puppet series was unable to deliver what programmes from the likes of Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci have been able to do.

"Essentially the puppets couldn't really deliver a line," he said. "They looked great but they couldn't act."

Politicians of the time have often said that they were actually pleased when they were given their own puppet, as it turned them into a household name when normally they would fade into the background (like a lot of MPs today). In the mid-1980s, a regular Spitting Image viewer could probably name Margaret Thatcher's entire cabinet. You'd be forgiven for only knowing about four of David Cameron's team.

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It's been a whopping 30 years since Spitting Image first hit our screens on ITV in 1984. The satirical puppet show quickly became one of the most-watched shows of the 1980s and early 1990s. I wasn't able to fully appreciate the series when it was first on TV.

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We all adored being savaged on Spitting Image (honest!)

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We all adored being savaged on Spitting Image (honest!)

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A view of Spitting Image, by people who were mercilessly ridiculed by it. Despite them being mocked, nearly all the reviews were positive.

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Celebrities brace yourselves: Spitting Image is back. The satirical puppet show that attracted huge audiences in the Eighties and Nineties by lampooning the famous is returning this spring in a series called Newzoids.

But what was it like for the original targets? Five very thick-skinned household names recall their time in the Spitting Image spotlight.

I am sure that it was not the intent or purpose of the creators of my Spitting Image, but my puppet became a very good friend to me. He never said very much, but from his well-studded leather jacket, to his bovver boots and neat rubber truncheon he exuded masculinity and potentially violent strength.Nor

He often appeared as Margaret Thatcher's enforcer, and I recollect a scene when she and President Mitterrand were in the cab of the EU truck, vying to take the wheel. The dispute was resolved by my Spitting Image observing: 'Nice little set of knuckles you got there Francois,' and bashing his fingers with knuckle dusters until he let go of the wheel.

In the real world, one Saturday I was on my way back from Merseyside to London, unaware that Millwall had lost away to Liverpool that day and the train was full of disgruntled and drunken Millwall supporters.

When I went to the buffet car, I was recognised and welcomed with cries of: 'Ere Norm, where's your leather jacket?' I was then drawn into an unlikely argument on the merits of Prime Minister John Major's proposed denationalisation of British Rail.

I was not winning, until from the front of the queue there came a great cry of: 'Norm mate. Yer right. They've run out of f*****g beer. Only a bl***ing nationalised pub would run out of beer on a Saturday night.'

At Euston, I tried to sneak off to the cab rank. Instead I found myself surrounded by a mass of Millwall fans.

Their spokesman declared they had written a song, 'In praise of Norm', which they would sing whilst escorting me to my cab. Other people scattered at the sight and sound in utter disbelief and some trepidation.

Their song was about the exploits of my Spitting Image puppet, for I had become one of them. A small, slight, dark-suited, (admittedly skin-headed) elderly gentleman in the midst of a mob of bovver boys from Millwall.

I cannot say that my wife was greatly attracted to my alter ego, but my children found him funny, while colleagues such as David Steel, whose puppet was pocket-sized, were envious.

I only met my puppet once - and somewhat regretfully decided that it would be too self indulgent to bid for him. Looking back, I can only say thank you, creators of my Spitting Image, you gave the Chingford Skinhead street credibility. I could not have done it without you.

Jilly Cooper

My puppet first appeared on Spitting Image in 1985 after my novel Riders came out. It was hilarious and would run around saying 'Sex! Sex! Sex!' all the time because Riders had masses of sex in it.

Indeed, I remember a friend of my late husband Leo ringing him up shortly after the book came out, to ask: 'How does Jilly know all this stuff?'

I wasn't remotely offended by the puppet as it wasn't cruel at all, but amicable and kind. They had my hair off to a tee - which was easy as I have always had the same hair. My grandmother once told me to never change my hair as it covers my crows' feet.

Looking back, it was a terrific accolade. Leo was thrilled by it - he thought his wife had made it at last! And the children thought it was hysterical.

But then, the show was very funny - it cheered everyone up. And the key to its success were the strong characters who were being satirised in the show. As there weren't many other women to have featured, it really was a very kind honour.

Jeffrey Archer

I adored Spitting Image, we all did. I consider myself lucky in that I was featured pretty much from the start of the series, and I know of at least two members of Margaret Thatcher's government who were desperate to be in it. I won't name them, but I saw their disappointment every week when their puppet failed to appear.

That was how it worked, no one was given any warning that a puppet was being created, you just tuned in every week and waited.

I was honoured to be a part of what, I think, was the funniest sketch of all, and one that is still quoted to this day: Margaret Thatcher, seated in the Cabinet office, where everyone was having dinner. The waiter takes her order (raw steak) and then asks: 'And the vegetables?' to which she replies: 'They (the Cabinet) will have the same as me.' Quite brilliant.

I was never a member of the Cabinet, so my character wasn't seated at the dinner table. Instead, my puppet - dressed in a tracksuit and with a whistle around his neck - bounced around in the background, carrying out Mrs Thatcher's orders: 'Get rid of him, Jeffrey,' and so on.

My role in the government at the time was to be in charge of marginal seats in the 1987 General Election campaign, of which there were 60.

It was my job to make sure we won them - to bounce around the country, carrying out Mrs Thatcher's orders.

That was clearly how the Spitting Image creators saw me, and it was a very clever image.

I never knew what Mrs Thatcher thought of her puppet, or indeed the show. I know she had a sense of humour, though, and certainly wasn't afraid of being lampooned.

I shall be watching the new series avidly, to see how the Milibands and Ed Balls of today are dealt with. I know I won't appear second time around, we had our day and it's the new generation's turn now.

The most pressing thing for me is to find out what happened to my Spitting Image puppet. I would love to know where he is, and buy him if at all possible.

If anyone knows of his whereabouts, please do shout.

It would be wonderful to see him.

Spitting Image started off picking on the Royal Family and politicians and then suddenly, in the mid-Eighties and without any warning whatsoever, up popped the puppet of me.

I stared at the TV screen and said: 'Wow!' For this was an honour - of course it was. Having your own Spitting Image puppet was an accolade, and I could see the caricature was very well done.

I was cast as this tiny character with a comedy wig that was either set on a spring or spinning around on the puppet's head like a top.

People have asked whether I found this hurtful, but I didn't. Anyone who'd been to my live shows would know that 'wig jokes' were an intrinsic part of my act, I was forever sending up myself.

The jokes went even further: eventually a sketch was devised based on the TV series One Man And His Dog. Only, in this parody, I was the master and my toupee the dog. Yes, it was very funny.

Around this time, coincidentally, I'd finally given up on the toupee because I'd reached a certain age. No one wants to go through life looking like Donald Trump. But the Spitting Image wig gags kept coming. Only when the jokes started to become cruel and personal did I finally stop seeing the funny side.

One sketch featured me supposedly pulling down the blouse of one of my assistants, and burying my head into her breasts. It was quite obviously Debbie McGee - now my wife. We weren't even dating then, and it was acutely embarrassing, not only for her, but also her parents. I rang them and apologised.

For me, a line had been crossed and I stopped watching.

I heard through the grapevine years later that the magician Fay Presto bought my puppet and uses it as part of her act. I have no idea if that is true, but I hope so.

It's good to think it is still raising a few laughs somewhere.

I was never offended. The slobbering latex me was a decent chap who did his unsuccessful best to prevent Neil Kinnock from falling over his own feet. Had I received the same treatment as Home Secretary Kenneth Baker - portrayed as a slug - I might not have enjoyed it quite so much.

But it does politicians good to be laughed at. And I could always console myself with the thought that I was Spitting Images' eponymous hero - the only character in the whole show who actually spat.

When I visited their workshop, I discovered that the spluttering made my image the most expensive puppet to maintain. The spray of water, which accompanied every word, was squirted by a motor car windscreen-washer, fastened to where (in real life) my tonsils would have been. The constant drenching made the other me rot and I had to be renewed every few months.

Typically, Margaret Thatcher was imperishable.

The spitting joke did me one good turn. In 1990, I spoke to the Police Federation Annual Conference - the graveyard of Home Secretaries and their shadows. As I approached the platform, all the officers in the front row opened umbrellas.

I began my speech: 'Gentlemen, you underrate me. With the wind behind me, I can reach the back of the hall.' They laughed and - without, I suspect, agreeing with a word I said - they listened to me.

I felt a real affection for my rubber doppelganger - although not enough to spend the £5,000 it would have cost to buy him. But his picture appears on the cover of one of my books and it hangs on my office wall.

So I look forward to Newzoids and hope it does its job of puncturing pomposity. That requires it to pick hard targets, not easy prey. And in doing so it will cause much offence.

But that is unavoidable if it is to be anything like as good as the original.

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Spitting Image victims insist they were happy being lampooned

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Celebrities brace yourselves: Spitting Image is back. The satirical puppet show that attracted huge audiences in the Eighties and Nineties by lampooning the famous is returning this spring in a series called Newzoids. But what was it like for the original targets? Five very thick-skinned household names recall their time in the Spitting Image spotlight.

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Spitting Image at 30: 13 things you never knew

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Spitting Image at 30: 13 things you never knew

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A collection of interesting facts regarding the show, concerning its production and its impact on the wider world.

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February 26, 2014 marks the 30 th anniversary of the first broadcast of ITV's satirical puppet show Spitting Image, created by Roger Law and Peter Fluck.

To celebrate three decades of latex lampoonery, we uncover some facts you may not know about the series.

The roster of impressionists and comedians who contributed voices to the show during its 12-year run read like a Who's Who of British comedy, including Steve Coogan, Harry Enfield, Chris Barrie, Alistair McGowan, John Thomson , Hugh Dennis , Jon Culshaw , John Sessions, Rory Bremner, Peter Serafinowicz and Adrian Edmondson. And that's before you even get to script-writing talent such as Ian Hislop and Richard Curtis.

Spitting Image can also be thanked for bringing cult TV series Red Dwarf to the world, with creators Rob Grant, Doug Naylor and Chris Barrie meeting each other while working on the show.

Co-creator Roger Law claims that deadlines were so tight in order to keep the weekly show topical that while the target was to film on a Friday, edit on a Saturday and air the show on a Sunday, there were occasions when the second half of the show was still being edited as the first half aired on TV.

In 1993, the Spitting Image team made a feature-length film of Peter and the Wolf, Sergei Prokofiev's classic composition for children. Bizarrely, the work was narrated by a puppet likeness of Sting and voiced by the rock star himself, a long-time fan of the show.

A puppet based on the likeness of Lord Lucan - who famously disappeared in 1974 - would often appear working menial jobs in the backgrounds of sketches set in foreign countries.

By the time the show ended in 1996, more than 1,000 puppets had been created. Many were auctioned off at Sotheby's in 2000, with Margaret Thatcher (£10,200) and Mick Jagger (£6,835) the top sellers as a grand total of £370,000 was raised.

Nigel Plaskitt, one of the Spitting Image puppeteers, also worked on the Muppet Show, The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy and was the man behind ITV/PG Tips puppet Monkey.

Spitting Image was famous for the silly songs that closed each show, but became a real chart success in 1986 when The Chicken Song (written by Red Dwarf duo Rob Grant and Doug Naylor) occupied the number one spot for three weeks. The series also created a full-length video for the Genesis single Land of Confusion, which featured puppets of the band as well as various political figures.

Steve Brown, one of the contributors to the musical parodies on the show, also appeared on TV screens as Glen Ponder - the fictional conductor of Alan Partridge's live studio band in the series Knowing Me Knowing You.

A planned new series of Spitting Image was in the works in 2005 but, according to former producer John Lloyd, was cancelled after ITV created puppet likenesses of Ant and Dec to present the show. This was contrary to the wishes of creator Roger Law, who had requested that no new puppets be made without his consent.

Popular characters had multiple parts to enable contrasting likenesses for different sketches - Roger Law has said that the Margaret Thatcher puppet had a variety of heads and Princess Diana possessed over 25 costumes.

Creator Roger Law claims that a Ronald Reagan puppet was strip-searched by airport customs when being transported for filming in America.

In an article for The Guardian in 2013, Roger Law revealed that he and co-creator Peter Fluck were planning a Spitting Image exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery during the school holidays where children would "enter the exhibition through Thatcher's mouth, before travelling along her innards, with all her wondrous achievements and friends and enemies on display... before finally all exiting through the Iron Lady's bottom". He claims that after initially getting the go-ahead, it was cancelled by 'Thatcher-appointed' trustees at the gallery.

February 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the first episode of Spitting Image.

To mark the occasion, the BFI are hosting a Q&A with the creators and contributors to the series on February 27, while London's Cartoon Museum are displaying a variety of memorabilia in an exhibition entitled Spitting Image - From Start To Finish from February 26 to June 8 2014

An arena documentary Whatever Happened to Spitting Image will be screened on the BBC later in the year.

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Spitting Image at 30: 13 things you never knew

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February 26, 2014 marks the 30 th anniversary of the first broadcast of ITV's satirical puppet show Spitting Image, created by Roger Law and Peter Fluck. To celebrate three decades of latex lampoonery, we uncover some facts you may not know about the series.

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Why did the Spitting Image satire boom go bust?

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Why did the Spitting Image satire boom go bust?

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A look at the long term trend of satire, and how Spitting Image represents the satire industry at its peak.

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Our political satire industry is centuries old. Jonathan Swift suggested in the 1729 essay A Modest Proposal that the Irish poor should sell their children to the rich as food ("A young, healthy child is... a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout").

The cartoons of James Gillray, sold in print shops in the late 18th century, had a major impact on the public view of the governments of the day.

A letter to Gillray from Lord Bateman, one of his patrons, said: "The Opposition are as low as we can wish them. You have been of infinite service in lowering them and making them ridiculous."

The Royal Family was also at the sharp end of Gillray's pen. George IV was famously portrayed as fat and dissolute in the picture A Voluptuary Under The Horrors Of Digestion. Even at the time (1792) foreigners could not believe it was acceptable to ridicule the heir to the throne in such a way.

Fast forward 150 years to the "satire boom" which brought us Private Eye, That Was The Week That Was, Beyond The Fringe and The Frost Report.

The climate of the early Sixties meant that satire was at the front of popular culture. That Was The Week That Was was broadcast on a Saturday night and an audience of 12 million regularly enjoyed watching Harold Macmillan and John Profumo being royally roasted by a fearless team of writers and presenters. Ted Heath claimed the programme led to the "death of deference".

Even in the Seventies, politicians were gently ribbed in prime-time by such comedians as Mike Yarwood, whose impersonations of Denis "Silly Billy" Healey and Harold "Hey, Mary, come and listen to this" Wilson may not have had the barbed intellectual wit of TWTWTW but at least kept politicians in the popular conscience and gave viewers a vague idea of what their policies were.

ITV's Spitting Image, which ran from 1984-96, mixed Yarwood's popular entertainment ethos, using puppet caricatures from the studio of Peter Fluck and Roger Law, plus writers such as Steve Punt, Nick Newman, Ian Hislop, Ben Elton and Richard Curtis, who knew how to wittily, and sometimes cruelly, insert the knife between rubber shoulders.

Screened on Sunday nights at 10pm, the third series was watched by 15 million viewers; not bad for a nation getting ready to go to bed to face the working week ahead.

Everyone knew that Margaret Thatcher dressed as Churchill, that a tiny, childlike David Steel lived in David Owen's pocket, that the Queen Mother was fond of gin and horse racing and that Education Secretary Kenneth Baker was a slug. While The Chicken Song was not exactly going to bring down the Government, it did top the charts for three weeks and was backed with the rather more political I've Never Met A Nice South African.

Today, however, we are not so much in a satire boom as a satire vacuum...

At a time when, arguably, society is more divided and people seem more uninterested in politics (the very thing that they should be more interested in than ever) we need a liberal dose of satire, ideally aimed at a large audience.

OK, so we have Channel 4's 10 O'Clock Live, billed as "an alternative take on the week's news" (yawn) and the brilliant The Thick Of It, whose view on the inside of politics would have to be heavily bleeped in order to get rid of Malcolm Tucker's expletives for a family audience.

America appears to be having its own satire boom, with Jon Stewart's Daily Show and The Colbert Report on the Comedy Central channel, and Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO.

Admittedly, they're not on the main networks but at least they provide a provocative and involving take on politics.

As Harry Enfield, who provided the voices for Douglas Hurd and David Steel on Spitting Image, said on last week's BBC Four tribute: "When Spitting Image was on, many more members of the public knew the name of every politician in the Cabinet and even the Shadow Cabinet than they do now."

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Why did the Spitting Image satire boom go bust?

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THE BBC screened a documentary last week called Whatever Happened To Spitting Image? celebrating 30 years of the bitingly witty puppet show. Arguably, they should follow it with a show entitled Whatever Happened To British Political Satire? as it seems to have all but disappeared from mainstream popular culture.

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Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady in Pop Culture

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Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady in Pop Culture

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A look at Thatcher's effect on popular culture. References in detail the relationship her puppet had on her public image.

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As is so often the case with female leaders, former Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who passed away earlier this week aged 87, was a woman you either loved or hated. She was one of only a handful of women to break through the male dominated ranks of politics and make it to the highest echelon of global power, and subsequently stick in the world's collective memory; with the others being India's Indira Gandhi, Israel's Golda Meir and, most recently, Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto. But none of them has made quite such an impact on popular culture as Thatcher.

When Margaret Thatcher arrived at Downing Street on May 4th 1979, after winning a landslide victory in the general election, it wasn't just Britain that paid attention, but the entire world. Here was a woman who had long been classed as a rank outsider in the political sphere, but somehow had made it to the top. As soon as Thatcher became Prime Minister, political satirists went into frenzy, never before had they encountered a female Prime Minister, let alone one who possessed such a fiery personality and was so outspoken.

Pete Mason, Margaret Thatcher (4,000 stamps)

Whether it is film, music, comedy, art, literature or theatre, Thatcher has been a constant source of fascination for creative individuals from all corners. Some of the best satirical comedy about Thatcher to come from the 1980's was by Spitting Image, the puppet sketch show, devised by Martin Lambie-Narin, Peter Fluck and Roger Law. The show regularly portrayed Thatcher as a cigar chomping, suit wearing alpha-female, who looked upon her ministers with distain; who could possibly forget the hilarious "What about the vegetables?" sketch, which saw Thatcher and her cabinet seated in a restaurant, and when the waitress takes her order and asks "what about the vegetables?" Thatcher looks up and says "Oh, they'll have the same as me."

Without knowing it, Spitting Image enhanced Thatcher's image as a powerful figure, who did not suffer fools gladly. As her time as Prime Minister went on, and with the enacting of certain policies, which some sections of society deemed deplorable, artists and musicians etc became ever more forthright in their disdain for her; such as Ska band the Beat, who released the song Stand down Margaret to the unashamedly hostile Margaret on the Guillotine by former Smiths front man Morrissey.

Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady

With music seeing the most antagonistic reactions to Thatcher's premiership, the world of film and TV has seen far more diverse interpretations. In 2002 the BBC aired The Falklands Play, which centred on the critical moments of the Argentine invasion of the British Falkland Islands. Starring Patricia Hodge as Thatcher, her portrayal was of a head strong woman who was determined to fight the invaders by any means possible. In 2008, the BBC again aired a play focusing on Thatcher's early years in politics during the 1950's; starring Andrea Riseborough The Long Walk to Finchley was a tongue-in-cheek effort to understand how Thatcher became the woman we all know. Following on from this, several other TV plays which seek to re-evaluate the Thatcher years have aired, including Margaret (2009) starring Lindsay Duncan, which specifically focussed on Thatcher's fall from grace in 1990.

Textportraits, Margaret Thatcher

The most sympathetic portrayal of Thatcher came in 2011, with the big screen release of The Iron Lady, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd. The film was a sensitive imagining of Thatcher's battle with dementia and bereavement over her husband Dennis, interspersed with flashbacks of her life, from a young girl to her time as Prime Minister and after. With Meryl Streep as Thatcher, The Iron Lady proved the most successful film to focus on her, all be it with mixed reviews from the critics.

In art too, Margaret Thatcher has been portrayed in many different ways. Artists such as Richard Stone and Pete Mason have created portraits which mix regal femininity with warrior like overtones; where as others such as Lola Dupré and Matt McLaren have portrayed her as some demon like harridan. Like society at large, the world of culture has some diverse opinions on the Iron Lady, but whatever they are, Margaret Thatcher's impact on popular culture has been undeniably immense, and like it or not, she is one of the most memorable leaders the world has ever known.

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Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady in Pop Culture

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As is so often the case with female leaders, former Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who passed away earlier this week aged 87, was a woman you either loved or hated.

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Spitting Image: still biting after all these years

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Spitting Image: still biting after all these years

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A conversation with people involved in making the show. Detailing the frantic process by which this was done, and the effects it had.

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Strikes and riots, braying yuppies brandishing brick-sized mobile phones, slimy politicians with a touch of the undead about them. If we have trouble remembering where 1980s reality ended and TV satire began, then it's partly because Spitting Image sprawled across its Sundays from 1984, cheering up the bleakest night of the week for audiences of up to 14 million viewers - right through to the end of the John Major years - in all its spit-crusted, wart-studded, latex glory. "Spitting Image's legacy is the 80s in all its minutiae," reflects Roger Law now. We covered it so well. By the end we had a thousand puppets."

"It was the naughty programme for children who stayed up late," observes actor Steve Nallon, about whose Mrs Thatcher voice, more shortly. "Breathtakingly naughty", "impertinent", "mischief" - the words many of its core team apply in recalling the feel of the show. But educational too: "For a lot of young people it put a name to politicians," says co-creator Peter Fluck.

The brief from ITV's Central TV franchise, according to producer John Lloyd, fresh from Not the Nine O'Clock News, was to be "as topical as That Was the Week That Was, but as dense in ideas as Monty Python."

The visuals came from artists Peter Fluck and Roger Law's remarkable partnership. They had been making physically grotesque 3D puppet tableaux for Newsweek and The Sunday Times since the 60s - limited only by the two dimensions of the pages. Both drew consciously on the physical cruelty of the great 18th- and 19th-century cartoonists Gillray and Tenniel. Nallon remembers the influence of Jonathan Swift in a sketch of Thatcher asking why poor people didn't "just eat their own bodies." And the Pythonesque sense of fantasy led to many memorable creations: a leather-jacketed Norman Tebbit as a threatening bully boy; Thatcher with a man's suit and cigar ordering dinner for her feeble male cabinet "vegetables"; the tabloid hacks of the Murdoch press as pigs in trenchcoats.

Fluck and Law's original vision of half an hour of hardcore political satire rated very badly with audiences and they both say John Lloyd established rules that worked. More of a mix of celebrity and sports stars. "No sketch more than a minute," recalls Law. "Except John Major and his wife who would eat peas for three minutes because they were so boring."

"It took quite a long time for writers to wise up to the fact that puppets had limitations," says Peter Fluck. "They'd write Norman Tebbit jumps on motorbike." The number of writing and voice talents who developed their skills on Spitting Image is still remarkable. They include Steve Nallon, then a 22 year old, fresh from an English and drama degree at Birmingham University, who applied an academic rigour. He developed an almost symbiotic relationship with his most famous subject, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, by listening to tapes of her in rowdy parliamentary proceedings.

"I went for a more jugular House of Commons type Thatcher," he explains, still switching effortlessly to that remarkable forceful timbre. "I listened to the steel that was in the voice... Most people did her in a patronising way. Very slow... I went for the honesty. 'I'm not going to hide behind anything. I'm going to tell you what I think.' I identified [that was] what people liked about her. My grandmother voted for her so I knew that."

The voices were recorded first on Saturday and then the show was filmed in Birmingham with the puppets driven up each week in a lorry from the London workshop. They were built and operated by a huge, talented team, many veterans of the recently cancelled Muppet Show. The show enjoyed a serious budget - £300,000 a show, which Lloyd thinks is equivalent to £1 million today. But there was no waste. Fluck remembers the churn of characters who were no longer topical: "Their heads went back into the workshop and we cut them up with scissors. [Henry] Kissinger's nose would be put on top of Princess Anne's mouth and got re-mixed into the sketches."

The intensity of the deadlines to stay topical is still unmatched. Says Law: "We'd even throw away on a Friday and reshoot on Saturday. More than once I recall editing the second half of the show when the first half was airing." Lloyd says he got by on adrenalin and about three hours sleep a night for three years, once working 88 out of 90 days in a row: "You had a choice. Die or get cleverer."

And what about the effect on politicians and public figures? Labour frontbencher Roy Hattersley, believes they were all fair game. "I never minded it. I think it was because of my persona. I was a sort of a bumbling old uncle. It would have been different if I'd been [Tory cabinet minister] Kenneth Baker sliming my way through it." Lloyd feels with hindsight it was unfair to Prince Charles. Hattersley, Law, Fluck and Lloyd all agree Liberal leader David Steel's career may have been damaged by his portrayal as a tiny figure in the pocket of his coalition partner SDP leader David Owen. The sketch only came about because of an early plan to make a number of smaller puppets. Hattersley thinks Steel was damaged "quite badly," but won't admit it. "But Owen believed he WAS the senior partner. The series only worked if the puppets had a grain of truth about them."

Inevitably one compares the creative freedom of those days with the pressures on political comedy today. Lloyd remembers fierce editorial discussions about where to draw the line on taste and content. "We struggled really hard to make it as balanced as possible.. And nobody ever lost their nerve. There's no chance in hell of that in the current construction of broadcasting...Would you find anybody who'd take the political flack?"

Lloyd woke up one day on the train back into London to hear the cleaners saying of Spitting Image: "I love that show because I hate the fucking Queen." It begs the question did Spitting Image change anything? Did it actually help the powerful figures it was lampooning? Lloyd, who remembers with horror the riots of the early 80s, is happy to think of it as a "contribution to democracy and stability" because it was "a safety valve" to let off steam.

Fluck says "I did learn that it doesn't change anything." But he treasures the fact that it made a mass audience laugh. "I was recently approached ... by someone who said: I want to thank you for getting us through the Thatcher years when things were collapsing."

So what is the show's legacy? "Celebrity culture, Tony fucking Blair and subsequently Cameron," grumbles Roger Law, the only senior founder member to stay through the show's entire 12-year run. "The only thing I hate more than politicians is puppets."

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Spitting Image: still biting after all these years

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Strikes and riots, braying yuppies brandishing brick-sized mobile phones, slimy politicians with a touch of the undead about them. If we have trouble remembering where 1980s reality ended and TV satire began, then it's partly because Spitting Image sprawled across its Sundays from 1984, cheering up the bleakest night of the week for audiences of up to 14 million viewers - right through to the end of the John Major years - in all its spit-crusted, wart-studded, latex glory.

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Margaret Thatcher and Spitting Image: we had no idea we would be joined at the hip

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Margaret Thatcher and Spitting Image: we had no idea we would be joined at the hip

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When Margaret Thatcher was ousted from the leadership of the Tory party, I had a conversation with my partner Peter Fluck about our relationship with her. I pointed out that, because of the success of our satirical puppet show Spitting Image, we would probably be joined at the hip forever with Thatcher. "Well," said Fluck, "I'm having the operation."

For caricaturists, at least, Thatcher was always a good little earner. The first caricature Peter and I made of her was commissioned by the late Hugo Young, who was then a political columnist for the Sunday Times. Hugo insisted I read the Tory party manifesto that had ushered Thatcher into 10 Downing Street. "C'mon," I said, "it's the usual load of old bollocks." "No," he replied. "She is going to do it." And indeed she did.

In the runup to her election, Peter and I had caricatured her as a question mark for the cover of the New Statesman (Who Is This Woman?), and as a dominatrix for a skin magazine because we quickly recognised that certain members of the Tory party liked a strong woman. We made caricatures of her partnered with Johnny Rotten for a satire on nightmare couples, which also included Princess Margaret and Tony Armstrong Jones. But we had no idea at that time just how many caricatures we were going to have to make of her, or how long the woman was going to be PM, or how uncomfortably close we were going to have to follow her star. The harder we tried to undermine her policies, the more successful Spitting Image became. Peter and I had been successful at publishing three-dimensional caricatures, modelled in plasticine then photographed, for magazines worldwide, but it was with the arrival of Thatcher and Spitting Image that our work really took off.

Over the years, Spitting Image's portrayal of Thatcher developed. As she became more strident, the puppet became more manic and manly. In desperation we tried satirical irony by portraying her as a pleasant person. It did not work and was instantly dropped. I had my own views on Thatcher the person. She was a lower-middle-class petit bourgeois. I come from a similar background and understood the enemy. She was, therefore, much easier to caricature than the bog-standard upper-class, self-deprecating, slippery politician.

Of all the caricatures we made, my personal favourite remains an image entitled Maggalyn: Thatcher as Marilyn Monroe in that famous pose astride an up-draft trying to hold down her billowing dress giving us a glimpse of her knickers. Our version was almost a facsimile of the original photograph, except if you look closely La Thatch is wearing Y-fronts with a bulging package.

Moving from print to television was an eye-opener. We were astonished how much outrageous stuff went to air with no problems. Spitting Image was never really leaned on; instead, it became a weekly lancing of Thatcher's excesses. Every year, Spitting Image published a comedy book for Christmas and we often tried to recycle ideas from the show to the printed page, only to be advised by our lawyers to drop the offending pages. One publisher, convinced that Thatcher would sue, wrote a note to 10 Downing Street to ask for the PM's blessing. To her credit, a letter came back wishing his entrepreneurial venture well. The most successful merchandising wheeze we came up with were the dog chews - throw a politician to your dog. They loved the colourful little squeaky rubber busts of Thatcher and Reagan.

Not all our enterprises had such happy endings. The National Portrait Gallery commissioned a Spitting Image exhibition for the summer holidays. We put forward the idea of the children entering the exhibition through Thatcher's mouth and travelling along her innards, with all her wondrous achievements and friends and enemies on display, to a small television studio where the kids who had been lucky enough to get the Willy Wonka golden tickets got to make a quick puppet show while the others watched, finally all exiting through the Iron Lady's bottom.

The workshop and I were toiling hard on going over budget when I received a call from the gallery. Some new trustees (Thatcher-appointed) objected to the exhibition. This had never happened before; trustees usually rubber-stamped exhibitions. The harassed director was profoundly sorry and upset but made it clear the show must not go on. Hugo Young explained to me that Thatcher's modus operandi was to place her people at the top of institutions and very quickly everything else would fall into line - and, of course, it worked.

Spitting Image was most certainly joined at the hip with Thatcher. We strung it out for far too long after she went, but the steam had gone out of the show. We had a great deal of fun with the Leaderene. Clearly my idea of fun would not have been Thatcher's. Seeing in the New Year with Jimmy Savile, as she did on a number of occasions, would have been my idea of hell. And that was before we discovered that you had to hide the grandchildren. Thatcher's lack of humour and abrasive and confrontational approach to carrying out her policies made the downright rudeness of Spitting Image possible. The current blitzkrieg of eulogies to the Thatcher years is driven by a nostalgia without memory.
Suzanne Moore is away.

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Margaret Thatcher and Spitting Image: we had no idea we would be joined at the hip | Roger Law

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When Margaret Thatcher was ousted from the leadership of the Tory party, I had a conversation with my partner Peter Fluck about our relationship with her. I pointed out that, because of the success of our satirical puppet show Spitting Image, we would probably be joined at the hip forever with Thatcher.

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It's been 30 years since Spitting Image burst onto television with biting satire that had (almost) everyone in stitches.

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It's been 30 years since Spitting Image burst onto television with biting satire that had (almost) everyone in stitches.

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A reflection of the show, discussing which boundaries it smashed, the effects it had culturally and whether or not it could be done today.

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From the relentless mocking of national treasures - a gin-swigging Queen Mother, a dizzy Diana, a blunderbuss-toting Prince Philip - to international figures including a womanising Pope John Paul II, a scornfully domineering Margaret Thatcher and a trigger-happy President Reagan, nothing and no one was sacred.

Not even God, who was shown scouring Heaven for a copy of the Bible, with Jesus suggesting he follows JR Hartley and consults Yellow Pages, parodying a TV ad of the time. That sketch brought hundreds of complaints from viewers.

Nor was the Queen (habitually portrayed with a headscarf and CND badge) a no-go area and she was not always amused.

'This time they've gone too far,' she's reported to have fumed after being upset by one parody. In fact Her Majesty's sense of humour failure prompted a consultation with her lawyers.

The subject of the royal disapproval: a grotesque characterisation of Prince Andrew. Created by Peter Fluck and Roger Law, the team behind the TV show and its big-selling spin-off books, the grinning Andrew puppet was not only a naked centrefold but was using two pounds of Cumberland sausage as a prop.

'I think it was the only time the Queen or any member of the royal family complained about the way we parodied them,' recalls Law, 72. 'It was before Andrew married Sarah Ferguson in 1986 and we depicted him as a man-about-town.

'It was a double-page spread in the Spitting Image annual rather than something that appeared on TV. The Queen wanted advice on whether what we had done to Andrew was obscene. We let it be known if it went to court we'd turn up with the puppet and sausages and let a judge and jury decide. We never heard any more.'

As Spitting Image celebrates its 30th anniversary with a London exhibition and a BBC Arena documentary, the programme makers and some of its victims are happy to recall the golden age of political satire on TV.

Between 1984 and 1996 a regular audience of 15 million tuned in to wallow in the mockery of politicians, pop stars, sports personalities, religious figures and world leaders. The show won ten BAFTAs and two Emmys.

Margaret Thatcher was portrayed as a crypto-fascist who had private conversations with Adolf Hitler, who was living under an assumed name next door to her at No 9 Downing Street. She wore a man's suit, and treated her Cabinet - all depicted as snivelling sycophants or troublesome yobs - with contempt. One sketch said it all: at a dinner with her colleagues, she orders steak. 'What about the vegetables?' a waitress asks. 'Oh, they'll have the same as me,' she replies, indicating the rest of the Cabinet.

Law says, 'We hoped that our caricatures would force her to change her policies, but sadly they didn't. But with the Falklands, the miners and privatisation, Mrs Thatcher was divisive and we reflected that in Spitting Image. Looking back, our depictions of her and other people ring true.

'If you look at archive film of Mrs Thatcher it is very hard to find a piece of film where she doesn't look bonkers, driving a tank, or a tractor. That was what you saw in Spitting Image. To give her credit, though, she never complained.'

The other big political beasts of the time were just as relentlessly lampooned. The famously laid-back Deputy Prime Minister William Whitelaw was seen shuffling into meetings in a dressing gown. Chancellor Geoffrey Howe talked to sheep. Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine was put in a flak jacket.

Trade and Industry Minister Norman Tebbit - Mrs Thatcher's loyal sidekick and enforcer - was parodied as a leather-jacketed thug. Now Lord Tebbit, he confesses that he found his Spitting Image alter ego useful. 'It was good for my political career. I always won, I was never beaten. Once, I was on the train from Liverpool and went to the buffet car which was full of Millwall supporters returning from a match.

They were complaining that the beer had run out, and I said it would never happen when the railways were denationalised. The fans loved it - and when the train arrived in London, crowds of them escorted me to a taxi, singing a song they had written about me. So there was this middle-aged man in a dark suit and overcoat clutching a briefcase surrounded by Millwall supporters walking him to a taxi singing a song in praise of Norman Tebbit. Because of Spitting Image, they really believed I was a hard man, like them.'

One person who loathed his depiction as a midget in the pocket of SDP leader David Owen was Liberal leader David Steel. His wife Judy complained the Spitting Image portrayal, 'almost fatally wounded his career'.

When Mrs Thatcher was ousted in 1990, Spitting Image lost its star turn and prime target. Her successor John Major was so dull his puppet was sprayed grey, and was seen counting peas on his plate as he dined silently with wife Norma. 'That was the only sequence we could do without voices,' says Roger Law.

Fluck and Law invented an affair between Major and his Health Minister, Virginia Bottomley, in an attempt to make him more interesting. They had considered using Edwina Currie (herself portrayed as a vampire) instead - not knowing that she and Major really had been having a secret relationship - but rejected the idea as too unlikely.

'Some of the punch went out of Spitting Image when Maggie was sidelined,' says Law. 'Major's government was deemed too dull for satire.' John Major does not have particularly happy memories of Spitting Image. In fact he claims to have no memory at all. 'To tell you the truth I didn't watch it,' he tells me. 'But I was told about it. And then Norma told me not to watch it. So I didn't. I had other things to do.'

Labour leader Neil Kinnock - 'the Welsh windbag' - was depicted talking for hours about everything except his policies.

His deputy Roy Hattersley 'put the spit into Spitting Image' because he was shown spraying everyone as he lisped. Neil, now Lord Kinnock, says, 'All my family were avid SI watchers - the kids thought "my" puppet was an improvement on the real thing. My wife Glenys thought her portrayal as the boss of bosses was a huge joke, although the accent used for her was lousy - she's from North Wales, not South Wales. We need a 21st-century version, and soon - just think of Osborne, Cameron, Pickles, Hague and Gove.

SPITTING IMAGE BY NUMBERS

They'd all be naturals for Spitting Image, together with Nick Clegg and maybe Vince Cable. Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Alex Salmond could, of course, play themselves... no puppets needed.'
Lord Hattersley recalls a dinner in the 80s with his father-in-law, a lawyer and company director.

'He was a rather distinguished figure. I said we must get back home to watch Spitting Image. He'd never heard of it. "Oh, it's a wonderful show," I told him. When we got back I switched on the TV and there were two page three girls having a conversation through their nipples. My father-in-law harrumphed and said, "So this is what you've come to."

'I rather liked my portrayal, a bit like Badger in Wind And The Willows, though I dribbled a lot. Recently a taxi driver who couldn't be more than 30 and had no idea I was a politician said, "I remember you from Spitting Image."' But Hattersley wasn't tempted to buy his puppet. 'I would have liked to but it was on sale for £3,000, it was too expensive.'

Tony Blair was first seen as a public schoolboy in shorts, blazer and cap. Later, when he became Labour leader, he was portrayed with a smile that grew even wider when he said anything of importance. Other world figures had their own puppets. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's distinctive birthmark on his head was shaped into a hammer and sickle. US President Ronald Reagan, endearingly dotty, was shown in bed with two red call buttons at his side. One marked Nurse, the other Nuke.

Arena editor Anthony Wall, who is putting together the BBC documentary, says it was the mocking of the royal family that caused the most controversy.

'It was almost like an alternative history of the royals. In those days, there wasn't a lot of interest in them, but now thanks to William and Kate they are popular again. It was pretty amazing how vicious Spitting Image was towards the royal family and what they got away with. It was quite breathtaking compared to the blandness of today.'

Princess Diana was portrayed as an attention-seeking airhead and Sarah Ferguson was a chinless, disaster-prone Sloane Ranger. Charles was always talking to his plants. The Queen Mother carried a bottle of gin and a copy of the Racing Post, spoke with a strong Birmingham accent and arm-wrestled a permanently tipsy Princess Margaret over a glass of vodka.

And when Prince William was born they broke a bottle of champagne over his head. The Queen at least was seen as good humoured, only fretting about the winner of the 3.30 at Doncaster, and was a secret communist.

Says Roger Law, 'Queen Victoria had turned the royal family into a typical upper-middle-class English unit and no one had satirised them. Until we did. Apparently Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson loved it but I don't think the rest of them did, with the possible exception of Prince Philip, who we portrayed as a gung-ho naval officer.' Meeting Roger at a function, Philip said, 'Hello, this is the real me, not my puppet'.

Nor did showbusiness figures escape. A Mick Jagger character was depicted as permanently high, Keith Richards comatose, Ringo Starr drunk. In every episode, Madonna changed her hair and clothes and Michael Jackson's skin turned lighter.

The heavyweight opera singer Luciano Pavarotti ate everything he saw, Paul McCartney was always releasing albums that flopped and a muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger fretted over the size of his manhood. Roger Moore was shown as having a delivery so wooden that only his eyebrows moved. 'My puppet was always a better actor than me,' jokes Moore now.

There was no respite for sportsmen. Paul Gascoigne was always crying, champion jockey Lester Piggott, usually a man of few words, most of them mumbled, had to be sub-titled. Occasionally, worlds crossed, as when John McEnroe and Joan Collins were featured in bed. 'It was in,' says McEnroe. 'John, it was not even close,' replies Joan.

The show made the careers of people like Harry Enfield, Steve Coogan and Jan Ravens, who provided the voices, and Ian Hislop, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, who wrote scripts. 'But it was prohibitively expensive,' says Anthony Wall. Puppets did not come cheap - many of the most popular had several heads, all showing different expressions. They all had to be sculpted by hand and cost around £2,000 each, which was a fortune in the 80s.

'Each half-hour show cost around £250,000, more than a drama production at the time. But the satire was very mocking, it went right to the heart of the Establishment and it took tremendous courage to put it on.'

Could it be done today? Producer John Lloyd is convinced it couldn't, 'Programme makers would be too scared.' Says Anthony, 'Maybe this anniversary might trigger something. It had its time and place when Mrs Thatcher was in control and behaved like it. People don't believe David Cameron is in control. Are the bankers or management consultants or GCHQ in control now? People feel disempowered.'

Many puppets were auctioned. One Thatcher puppet sold for £10,200 and Cherie and Tony Blair went for £12,000. Roger Law has kept a Queen and a Mrs Thatcher and according to Wall there's a collector in Essex with 22 puppets. Plenty more survive in the Spitting Image Archive - actually three sea containers standing on the Norfolk Fens, with over 1,000 life-size moulds.

'They are watched over by the Mrs Thatcher, Queen Mother and Princess Diana puppets,' says Law. 'It's always a shock when I open the doors. Perhaps someone will be kind enough to offer them a permanent home. After all, they are a complete guide to who was who in the 80s and 90s.'

The exhibition Spitting Image From Start To Finish is at London's Cartoon Museum until 8 June. The TV documentary will be on BBC4 on 20 March.

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It's been 30 years since Spitting Image burst onto television

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From the relentless mocking of national treasures - a gin-swigging Queen Mother, a dizzy Diana, a blunderbuss-toting Prince Philip - to international figures including a womanising Pope John Paul II, a scornfully domineering Margaret Thatcher and a trigger-happy President Reagan, nothing and no one was sacred.

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Spitting Image: essential satire for a generation - Telegraph

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Spitting Image: essential satire for a generation - Telegraph

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Discusses the effect the show had at the time, and the effects it's still having now. Also details some of the creators who went on to even bigger things from it.

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It understood that by making the shadowy souls at Westminster celebrities you could better hold them to account. As well as providing a leg-up for impressionists and comedians who went on to greater things - among them Steve Coogan, Harry Enfield, Alistair McGowan and Jan Ravens - it gave the viewers a basic grounding in the personalities and policies of the day.

It's a shame that not all the series have been released on DVD because it serves now as a fascinating documentary of its times and considering its fast turn-around, exhausting to produce by all accounts, many of the sketches still hold good. Though it kicked off in the now far-gone, nuclear Armageddon-shadowed days of the Cold War, portraying the White House as being run by a President Reagan capable of functioning without a brain and the Kremlin as ruled by a succession of moribund old men with identikit heavy eyebrows, its lasting virtues were apparent from the start.

Although viewing figures had declined by the time the show shut up shop, if you watch the final episode, it's astonishing how ahead of the game it still seems.

Who'd have thought that its futuristic "prophecy" of Jeremy Clarkson in old age, presenting a Top Gear spoof called Staying in Second Gear, would look fresh-minted today? And it induces a pang of what-might-have-been to see the team so ably sharpening their knives at the prospect of a New Labour landslide. How the nation might have found solace in the grotesque embodiment of Peter Mandelson as a snake as his spin-machine coiled itself ever tighter round the apparatus of government.

There's something enduringly inspired, too, about showing Tony Blair as hiding a portrait in his attic, Dorian Gray-style, in which lurk all the dark, left-wing sides of his personality. Considering what a field-day the team had with the first Gulf War, what followed 9/11 would have afforded a rich seam of satire too - a puppet of Osama bin Laden was made, apparently, but never got used.

Did the show inflict real-world damage? It must have done: on the credibility of the torrentially spitting Roy Hattersley, Shadow Chancellor in the mid-Eighties, on the influence of Liberal Party leader David Steel (depicted as the pip-squeak sidekick to SDP leader David Owen) and most of all on John Major, lent a permanent, deathly-dull pallor of grey. While sceptics often point to three general election wins as proof that Thatcher's critics didn't turn the public against her, by 1990 you had the disconcerting end-of-Animal Farm sense of turning from politician to puppet and not knowing which was which - you could say that she became her own worst parody.

Did Spitting Image create a climate in which it became unacceptable to vote Tory? It's worth arguing. Had it continued might it have made the failings of the Blair/ Brown pact more apparent to more people sooner? I'd say so. Don't Clegg, Cameron and Miliband unite in relief that they're safe from its unflattering gaze? They must do. And what would the Spitting Image lot have made of Nigel Farage, Alex Salmond and Vladimir Putin? It's fun to picture that.

Such matters will no doubt be discussed when a number of those bound up with the Spitting Image story convene at the BFI on Thursday evening following a preview screening of a forthcoming BBC4 Arena documentary about the show - among them Thatcher impersonator Steve Nallon, Ian Hislop, Harry Enfield and Lords Hattersley and Steel.

But the key question is should we all be fighting tooth and claw to get it, or something very like it, back?

Follow @Tele_Comedy

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Spitting Image: essential satire for a generation

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It understood that by making the shadowy souls at Westminster celebrities you could better hold them to account. As well as providing a leg-up for impressionists and comedians who went on to greater things - among them Steve Coogan, Harry Enfield, Alistair McGowan and Jan Ravens - it gave the viewers a basic grounding in the personalities and policies of the day.