Spitting Image

[TJ]

Let's wax lyrical about the 'latex lampoonery' that scored more direct hits than the Dead Ringers team could ever dream of.

[alan strang]

ALISTAIR BURNETT
And finally tonight, the story of Hazel - the tree that got stuck up a kitten. A-ha, ha ha ha!

[Felled Weeble Lawsuit]

'Geldof' rhymes with 'telled off'.

[Morrisfan82]

Tonight's Comedy Connections is about Spitting Image isn't it?

"Ow d'yer spell 'stiffy'?"

[Garfield And Friends]

Was it the first latex lookalike comedy show of it's kind? I know that Russia and France still have their equivalent shows,  but am not sure whether they predate Spitting Image.


For some reason I always link 'Viz' with 'Spitting Image' in my mind. (Not to mention the ST/Amiga computer game "Split Personalities", but that's not important right now.)

[skibz]

Russia's got cancelled a few years ago, under Putin's direct request. I know this because I have a mate that lives there (when he's not over here at UCL) who said that people were really pissed off that Putin could get a show like that cancelled in the first place. Apparently he thought it 'made a mockery of serious politics' or something. Twat.

[Z/Sb]

It may have been lowbrow and silly - but I really cracked up at the news flash about Bernard Manning farting. I have some later episodes (from around 1992) on tape which, though more miss than hit, still had some great stuff like Jimmy Saville in an asylum ("a bit of a loooooooony" I remember that bit). But, really, this show was one of the most imporatant shows of 80s tv. I still remember the stupid commotion the tabloids made at the time: "sick puppet show attacks Queen Mother" and all that. I think we all had a more enjoyable and memorable 80s youth because of Spitting Image, Viz and the Young Ones.

Germany's Spitting Image hasn't been on for a while but, like in the UK, the puppets have often been used on other shows and some German music videos. (Remember the brilliant Genesis "Land of Confusion" video with the Spitting Image puppets?)

I come from the Central region too! ;)

[Jemble Fred]

I've always had an entirely misplaced pride that Spitting Image was made by Central, my home region.

What's happened to the plans to bring it back? It was a terrible waste to scrap it in the first place – would it not have been worthwhile just to do special episodes once or twice a year?

[alan strang]

Tonight's Comedy Connections is about Spitting Image isn't it?

That should be interesting. I wonder if they'll mention the prototype puppets used in the Not The Nine O'Clock News pilot.

It'll be nice to hear John Lloyd blethering on anyway. It's a shame he never did much in front of the camera. He's a fantastic comedy performer.

Bet you they'll go and spoil it all right at the end by linking it to Dead Ringers (via Nev Fountain's auntie's hairdresser) and claiming that it's "carrying the mantle of political satire well into the 90s."

The Queen Mother furore was hilarious. All the main newspapers carried a photo of the puppet and lots of angry words. Imagine how many extra people tuned in just because of all the fuss. And she was nowhere to be seen throughout the show. I remember wondering whether they'd chickened out.

Right at the end, post-credits, there was a scrolling announcement plus voiceover which claimed that there never actually was a Queen Mother puppet ("And what's more we were on holiday at the time it wasn't being made.") and that, rest assured, they'd never stoop to such depths.

And then, a tiny faraway Royal figure in a pink hat walked into shot at the bottom corner of the screen and said "Oh, what a pity, and I was so looking forward to it!"

[Clinton Morgan]

Gob Baa Chef

Mouth Sheep Tounge


If you can't sell cars at the motor show
What are you gonna use?
Kerching!
Big Busters!

[the hum]

Isn't it supposed to be coming back, or have I missed something somewhere and the revival has died a death?

[Labian Quest]

There was a great  sketch one week that seemed to be based on an appearance Neil Kinnock had made on The Tube which was a fairly blatant attempt to get  more young people to vote Labour in the upcoming election, they had his puppet saying "I love all you black people, and all you brown people as well, and the babies, babies over eighteen, and gays and the lesbians too, all the lovely, lovely lesbians'

[The Mumbler]

Docherty and Hunter wrote that sketch, actually.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Isn't it supposed to be coming back, or have I missed something somewhere and the revival has died a death?

Yeh I was wondering the same thing.  There's a fresh load of politicians and celebs and othert arseholes that are crying out to have the piss ripped out of them every week.

There was a great  sketch one week that seemed to be based on an appearance Neil Kinnock had made on The Tube which was a fairly blatant attempt to get  more young people to vote Labour in the upcoming election, they had his puppet saying "I love all you black people, and all you brown people as well, and the babies, babies over eighteen, and gays and the lesbians too, all the lovely, lovely lesbians'

I've got a mix I did of that.  I did it back in around 1985 using a tape to tape machine to edit the audio, then I replayed it while a friend played keyboard, and recorded the result on another tape deck, so it's rather low-tech.
EDIT: I found it, and it's definitely the same sketch you quote, but it's parodying an interview with Brian Walden, not an appearance on The Tube.

And here it is... Vote For Me (Mirrored at Yousendit)
I might as well add another Spitting Image one done at the same time The Reagan Rap (Mirrored at Yousendit)

[Labian Quest]

There was a great  sketch one week that seemed to be based on an appearance Neil Kinnock had made on The Tube which was a fairly blatant attempt to get  more young people to vote Labour in the upcoming election, they had his puppet saying "I love all you black people, and all you brown people as well, and the babies, babies over eighteen, and gays and the lesbians too, all the lovely, lovely lesbians'

I've got a mix I did of that.  I did it back in around 1985 using a tape to tape machine to edit the audio, then I replayed it while a friend played keyboard, and recorded the result on another tape deck.  I'll upload it if I can find it.

Excellent.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Excellent.

Links in my previous post.

/me cringes
Some of the editing is pretty bad.

[Morrisfan82]

Quick bump - the Comedy Connections about Spitting Image is about to start in a minute.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

That wasn't bad - although the implication that there was a sudden switch-over from the Grant/Naylor/Hislop era to the Bill Dare/John O'Farrell one was simplified; there was quite a bit of crossover, but I imagine that would have meant drawing more arrows.

The pilot's gone missing then?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Spit alumni are always talking out their arses about how 'awful' the first series was - it wasn't at all. It was a bit slow, that was all. It was better than the Alistair McGowen years anyway.

Always nice to see Steve Punt talking wistfully.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Was it the pilot or the very first ep that had audience laughter on it?

[Darrell]

Was it the pilot or the very first ep that had audience laughter on it?

Nah, 1.1 exists alright. In the Bradford film and TV museum there's a television that loops it 24 hours a day. It's not *that* good an episode.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Nah, 1.1 exists alright. In the Bradford film and TV museum there's a television that loops it 24 hours a day. It's not *that* good an episode.

Does 1.1 have laughter on it?

[Darrell]

Does 1.1 have laughter on it?

It does. Yer actual canned laughter too, not audience laughter.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Is it definitely canned?

The first sketch in 1.2 had laughter too, but not the rest of it.

They exerimented with studio audiences again circa 1993. It was always shit.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Ah. So I haven't seen the pilot, then.

[Darrell]

Is it definitely canned?

It can only be. It sounds ridiculously unnatural and the exact same laugh sounds appear again and again.

[Labian Quest]

Excellent.

Links in my previous post.

/me cringes
Some of the editing is pretty bad.

I couldn't DL that :( apparently it was because my ISP is using a proxy server, my only option is to get a premium account. Meh.

[The Mumbler]

Lewis Chester details the pilot at length in his The True Story Of Spitting Image or whatever it's called (Faber, 1986 - I've got a copy somewhere, so will fish it out when I get a chance).  Made in July 1983, he comments of it, "It has never been screened.  Nor is it ever likely to be."  Which makes the comment "It's been lost" on Comedy Connections seem a tad suspicious.  I think Chester said something about legal wranglings.

Anyway, when I find it in my shambles of a flat, I'll type up some bits.

As for Comedy Connections, I'm afraid I loathe it, really.  I tune in with teeth ready to grit every week, knowing that there'll probably be one or two contributors or one or two clips that'll *just about* make it semi-worthwhile (why couldn't the unfailingly entertaining John Lloyd have just talked, unedited, for 30 minutes?), but that it'll doubtless be sunk by one of the most infuriating marriages of editing and narration script yet devised by TV.  "Can't you show a clip longer than ten seconds?", I shrieked at one point tonight.   People are always sighing rhetorically at this series, "Aaah, there's just too much to fit in to half-an-hour, it should be an hour long".  As if they'd suddenly increase the length of clips to 30 seconds, or even a minute, or have talking heads elaborating on annoyingly incomplete anecdotes.

John O'Farrell looked terribly pleased with himself regarding his bloody political sketches.  "The peas, the peas, the most boring vegetable".  Yes, from the most boring comedy writer in Britain.

[The Mumbler]

Here we are.  Oh yes, and the title is actually "Tooth & Claw: The Inside Story of Spitting Image".

Some set-up info first - the pilot was shot at Ewart Studios, Wandsworth from Monday 27th to Thursday 30th June 1983 (eight months before the beginning of the first series).  The script was a joint collaboration from John Lloyd and Tony Hendra, which may be why it's never resurfaced.  Chester: "Conceived in Malibu, mulled over in New Jersey, and finally composed by Lloyd  on location in Northumberland..." (so during filming of The Black Adder, then!).  Set design was by Malcolm Stone (who notably performed a similar role on The Muppet Show).  Director Philip Casson had also worked on The Muppets.

Chester even mentions pilot costs: £33,234 for puppet construction, £19,761 for the studio, and £16,475 for set costs alone.

Anyway, Chester now comments on the pilot.  Pages 42 - 44 of Tooth & Claw:

***********


"The pilot, entitled UNTV, was extraordinarily good viewing.  After the first battle-scarred series there were those who thought it was still the best programme Spitting Image had ever done.  Yet it was never shown publicly, nor is it ever likely to be.  The original reason for this was contractual.  Fees, which Spitting Image wanted to keep to a minimum, are a good deal lower for a pilot than for a transmitted programme.  Now, of course, the programme itself would be reckoned out of date.  But as a major landmark in the journey of Spitting Image, it is worth describing in modest detail.

The opening sequence introduces the viewer to the United Nations and its puppet Secretary-General, Perez de Cuellar, who inhabits an office with a bank of TV moniors which helps him keep in touch with what's happening round the world.  He invites viewers on a tour of his global domain.  As a guide, Perez shows a remarkable grasp of unfortunate axiom, along the lines - 'Don't count your chickens before they're deserted, as they say in Argentina'.  In Washington the first encounter is with the puppet Reagan, giving a fireside chat to the nation with two props, a lump of butter and a gun.  He is shown debating the merits of these commodities before demonstrating the superiority of the gun which he uses to blast the butter - 'See what I mean?  The butter is helpless, impotent.  Does it fight back?  No.  It's got no balls, butter.  It just spatters all over the place looking greasy.  Basically, butter is weird.'

In London, the Mrs. Thatcher and Norman Tebbit puppets are busy opening their mail, all of which explodes.  They wonder whatever happened to letters.  Michael Foot is seen lamenting unemployment which is now hurting many of his old friends in Ebbw Vale - 'my tailor, my barber, my embalmer, the man who used to saw the bottoms off old Seven-Up bottles to make my sunglasses - all unemployed'.  Over at Buckingham Palace, a corgi bites a royal baby and throws it off the balcony.

In Moscow, Andropov is seen interrogating people to the verge of death on primetime TV.  President Gaddafi of Libya appears as a magician who saws another puppet in half without benefit of illusion.  Begin is also credited with magical powers - producing a dove with an olive branch in its beak from a top hat.  He then strangles the dove.

It might be thought that this catalogue of atrocity would be sufficient for half an hour, but none of it compared to what was considered - and rightly so - the piece de resistance of the show.  It started demurely enough with one Japanese puppet interviewing five other identical Japanese puppets in the presence of the Emperor.  The purpose was to select a new Ambassador to the United States, and all the interviewees had been selected because of their individuality.  The interviewer explained, 'The hideous Yankee long-pigs seem to have this ridiculous notion that we all look the same to them'.

As anyone might guess, they have some difficulty in establishing their different identities.  Thus:

TWO: I would like to nominate Mr. Taizo Watanabe.
ONE: Well spoken, Mr. Funakoshi.
THREE: I haven't said anything yet.
ONE: So sorry, Mr. Saka, I mistook you for Mr. Funakoshi.
FOUR: No need to apologise to me.
ONE: You are Mr. Saka.
FIVE: No, I am Mr. Saka.
ONE: So sorry, Mr. Saka.  I mistook you for Mr. Funakoshi.
FOUR: No need to apologise.
ONE: Sorry?  *You* are Mr. Saka, then?
FOUR: No, I am Mr. Funakoshi.
THREE: Well, who the hell am I then?

This goes on for an appreciable time until the humiliation in front of the Emperor becomes so great that Four kills himself, stabbing himself in the approved criss-cross fashion.  One feels it's all his fault, and follows suit.  Five feels these have been pretty shabby apologies for a suicide, and proceeds to rip open his stomach in more spectacular fashion.  Six, deeply unimpressed, shows what he can do by managing to slit himself open and stuff all his limbs inside.  This prompts Three to slice the top of his head off with a sword.  He then works round the rim of his skull with a grapefruit knife and adds a glace cherry and a sliver of orange on a cocktail stick.  With the remaining half of his head, he proceeds to eat the contents before slumping forward.

With a sneer of contempt, the Emperor shows what he can do.  He chops the fingers off one hand with a brilliant piece of knifeplay, like a chef chopping a piece of fish into thin slices.  He cuts four juicy steaks from his stomach, slaps them on the table, and beats them with a long wooden tenderizer.  He then takes the knife and is about to do something amazing with his nose when the sketch mercifully stops.

For those who can see the funny side of disembowelling, it was apparently even more hilarious when the sequence was actually shot.  A small army of assistants had to lurk under the set extracting large quantities of putrescent offal and sausages from paper bags and passing them to the puppeteers above.  The technical difficulties of the performance, a major feat in puppeteering terms, caused chaos.  As the puppeteers tried to manoeuvre their swords in the required area, their heads came helplessly out to try to get a better look at the mess of weapons and guts below.  There were great tracts of videotape in which every expiring Japanese is accompanied by a round furry ghost - the top of the puppeteer's head in shot.

Despite its success, not all feelings about the pilot were good.  Hendra in particular was very unhappy - 'It was the first time I'd seen John Lloyd in action on the floor and I was horrified.  What made me really angry was the way he'd mess with the script.  He made wholesale changes on the floor.  I couldn't really go down and say "put that back in" so I had to bite my lip a great deal during the shooting.'  This would not, be resolved, be the situation when the actual show was produced.

The important thing at the time, however, was that Central's Charles Denton was delighted with the pilot videotape.  So delighted, in fact, that he rang John Lloyd to say that he wanted to give Spitting Image the big treatment - 26 continuous weekly shows.  Lloyd, remembering how crippling a Not The Nine O'Clock News series of eight had been, begged for a smaller favour.  Eventually they compromised on 13, and Denton, on reflection, was glad Lloyd had talked him out of it.  He was gladder still when the bills for the pilot came in."

**********

So is it just that relations between Hendra and Lloyd soured so much that Hendra refuses to allow even a clip of his script be shown over 20 years later?  Or maybe the pilot tape *is* lost?  Or maybe Hendra has the only copy of it, and has er, "lost" it.

[alan strang]

Cheers for that, Mumbler. Haven't read it for years.

As anyone might guess, they have some difficulty in establishing their different identities.  Thus:

That is effectively the 'Trial of the Gang Of Four' sketch from Not The Nine O'Clock News!

So is it just that relations between Hendra and Lloyd soured so much that Hendra refuses to allow even a clip of his script be shown over 20 years later?  Or maybe the pilot tape *is* lost?  Or maybe Hendra has the only copy of it, and has er, "lost" it.

I find it odd that Comedy Connections even alluded to the thing having been lost in the first place. Normally they'd just mention that there was a pilot show in passing, and then go straight on to discussing the series. The Blackadder one didn't feature clips from its pilot either did it?

Could well have been an 11th hour thing, awaiting a tape or an 'oh, go on then you fuckers' from Tony Hendra, neither of which arrived. I refuse to believe that at least a VHS doesn't exist.

Didn't Ben Elton contribute material to UNTV as well?