Spitting Image stages revival – and one politician who makes the cut is the ‘surprise hit of the show’

Published

3 years ago

February 10, 2023

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Jacob Rees-Mogg reimagined as a praying mantis, Priti Patel transformed into a bat and four Vladimir Putins – not many live shows can boast such a cast.

But Spitting Image Live: Idiots Assemble has a unique advantage – the lead cast are all puppets.

Comedians Al Murray and Matt Forde, the show’s co-writers, tell Sky News: “Suella Braverman is the surprise hit of the show… That puppet is disturbing in a very entertaining way.”

But showbiz is a fickle game, and while Vladimir Putin‘s current role in world politics means he has four puppets “to make what we’re doing with him work”, Kwasi Kwarteng (short-lived chancellor) and Nadhim Zahawi (ex-Conservative Party chairman) didn’t make the cut. Good calls, it turns out in political hindsight.

Murray explains: “You’ve got to be really sure who’s, for instance, the prime minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer before you can commit to having them in the show because it costs thousands of pounds to have them caricatured and cast in latex.”

Described as “a show simultaneously inspired and appalled by real events”, Murray says they are currently on “version 3.5” of the script.

So, how do you create a topical rolling review, but avoid rewriting it every time there’s a cabinet reshuffle? And let’s face it, with three PMs and four chancellors last year alone, UK politics has been something of a revolving door of late.

Calling the production “an oil tanker” – as well as numerous puppets the show has 12 puppeteers (all of whom appear on stage during the show) and 12 voice artists, and tech-wise there are lighting and video AV setups as well as song and voice tracks – Murray acknowledges, “what you can’t be doing is rewriting a sketch about the budget”.

He goes on: “We’ve ended up developing a show that is essentially shockproof… We’ve got a role for the prime minister in the story. So, we’d swap him out rather than have to rewrite the entire thing [if he changed]. Had England won the World Cup, that would have affected what we’d written as well.”

Fellow comedian and co-writer Matt Forde chips in: “Yeah, there would have been one extra joke.”

The show can basically be switched around and updated as current affairs dictate, but without completely upending the storyline, or cast of key characters.

And there’s not just politics and football to worry about, there’s also the ever-changing fads of the world of showbiz. Celebrities who have the honour of making the cut include Taylor Swift, Stormzy and Tom Cruise. As for royalty, King Charles, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle also make it in.

Not just lumps of plastic, it’s like the stars are really there Forde explains: “The puppets are so good, even though they are grotesque recreations of these people, they look and feel alive. And there is a part of your brain that genuinely believes King Charles, Stormzy and Greta Thunberg are all on stage together and chatting to each other. It does some sort of weird trick to your brain where you actually think you’ve seen those people together, it’s brilliant.”

First filmed for TV at Central Independent Television (now ITV Central) in Birmingham 40 years ago, Spitting Image held politicians, the Royal Family and celebrities to account with its biting cultural and political satire over 18 series from 1984 to 1996.

Watched by more than 15 million viewers at its height, the multi award-winning show had no shortage of inspiration for colourful content, with Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and The Queen among those recreated in puppet form and lampooned for our viewing pleasure.

Comedy veterans including Harry Enfield, Steve Coogan, Paul Whitehouse and Alistair McGowan all worked on the programme, as did Red Dwarf creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor.

The show’s creators Peter Fluck and Roger Law (both now part of the live show creative team) were originally political cartoonists, adapting their trade for TV.

Now, Murray says taking the show to the stage is just another level of the adaptation: “It’s not a comic doing an impression. It’s not an actor who doesn’t look like the King. You know, it’s a puppet. That’s a direct caricature of him.”

He says Forde’s Trump impression is “like having him there in front of you”.

So, what’s the trick to nailing the voice of a character?

Forde explains: “You need to hit upon a theme first, like some form of audio hook – like a sort of noise they would make, almost like a non-word noise. And then I think it’s about saying things that they could conceivably say. So, you sort of understand their vocal mannerisms… Keir Starmer has that slight blockage noise… With Trump you can just do these mad, rambling speeches.

“There’s a way of effectively capturing their essence through noise and the sorts of words they would say, and then it’s like a magic trick.”

Do they think any of the world leaders, celebrities or royalty lampooned in the show will object? Murray thinks not: “It would be daft to complain about this – it’s a Punch and Judy show.”

To prove the point, they’ve invited everyone featured in the show to come and see it, at least all those who are alive.

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With a tongue-in-cheek trigger warning on the show due to its “really naughty jokes”, Murray knows they are able to get away with more on stage with puppets than they would via conventional comedy.

“We have gone through a slightly sort of censorious vibe in the last few years,” he explains. “But now we’re not on television and we’ve not got to get this past BBC compliance or be worried about what the Daily Mail might say and all those factors that impinge on the kind of satire and comedy we get at the moment.”

With the evident success of the Spitting Image TV show, and more antics to dissect in politics and current affairs than ever before, why isn’t it still on our screens? Murray (who wrote for the two-series reboot in 2000) says it’s simply a case of cost, coming back again to the expense of the puppets at its heart.

“Spitting Image is an expensive show to write, shoot, produce, put on, and that is, to be honest, the beginning of the end of it.”

But he says TV’s loss is theatre’s gain: “When it came to TV in the first place in the 80s, it moved caricature on television and sort of rebadged caricature. And I think we’re doing that again by bringing it on stage. So, in a weird way, it feels like a better refresh than just doing it on the telly again.”

Idiots Assemble – Spitting Image Saves The World: Live on Stage is at the Birmingham Rep until Saturday 11 March.

Entertainment

Meghan reveals who said ‘I love you’ first with Harry – and what she misses about the UK

Published

8 hours ago

August 26, 2025

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Meghan reveals who said 'I love you' first with Harry - and what she misses about the UK

The second season of the Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle show With Love, Meghan, has been released.

Over the eight-episode series, which features celebrity guests including US model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen and Queer Eye’s Tan France, Meghan opens up about what she misses most about the UK, the meal she cooked on the night Prince Harry proposed, and who said “I love you” first.

Despite Harry not making a cameo in the Netflix show, Meghan does give some insight into her life in California with the prince, and their two children, Archie and Lilibet.

In one episode, she says it was Harry who first said he loved her, and that she fell in love with him while camping in Botswana, on the pair’s third date.

“We met in Bostwana and we camped for five days together,” she says, adding: “You really get to know someone when you are in a little tent.”

Later, Meghan reveals she tried to make a roast chicken on the night Harry proposed in 2017, but it didn’t turn out how she expected.

“I will say when I made a roast chicken for my now-husband I was still having a lot of challenges with the conversion of celsius and fahrenheit. I made a horrible chicken that night. I mean, truly terrible,” she says.

After first getting married, Meghan had planned to apply for British citizenship. But the pair later moved to the US after stepping down from their roles as working royals.

In episode three, with British fashion designer Tan France, Meghan admits one of the things she “misses the most” about the UK, after leaving five years ago.

She says: “Honestly, one of the things I miss the most about the UK is the radio station called Magic.”

To which France quips: “Magic FM. Wow! Now, sorry to say this to you publicly, but that’s such a grandma station.”

A laughing Meghan replies: “I’ll be that grandma.”

During a moment where the pair are crafting aprons for their children, Meghan says she “always wanted to be a mum”, which is now “better than she expected” after the birth of Archie, in 2019, and Lilibet – who they call Lili for short – in 2021.

Sympathising with France, who explained he gets heartbroken if away from his two young children for more than a couple of days, the duchess says the longest she and Harry have ever been without seeing their children is almost three weeks.

“I was… not well,” Meghan says about the separation.

In Harry’s 2023 memoir, Spare, he wrote of the “difficult days” after Queen Elizabeth’s death and how he and Meghan were separated from Archie and Lili for “longer than we’d ever been”.

He said when they reunited at their home in Montecito, “for days and days we couldn’t stop hugging the children, couldn’t let them out of our sight”.

The premiere of the second season of With Love, Meghan comes two weeks after Harry and Meghan announced a watered-down deal with the streaming giant Netflix.

They have signed a “multi-year, first-look deal for film and television projects”, in contrast to their reported $100m (£74m) contract five years ago.

Entertainment

Lil Nas X pleads not guilty after being charged with assaulting police officer

Published

15 hours ago

August 26, 2025

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Lil Nas X pleads not guilty after being charged with assaulting police officer

US rapper Lil Nas X has pleaded not guilty after being charged with assaulting a police officer while walking in downtown Los Angeles in his underwear.

The musician, real name Montero Lamar Hill, was taken to hospital and arrested after police responded to reports of a naked man shortly before 6am on Thursday.

The district attorney’s office said on Monday that Lil Nas X faces three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and one count of resisting an executive officer.

He was being held on a $75,000 (£55,457) bail, conditional on attending drug treatment. It is not immediately clear whether he had posted it and been released yet.

He is set to return to court on 15 September for his next pre-trial hearing.

During the hearing on Monday, Hill’s lawyer Christy O’Connor told the judge he had led a “remarkable” life, adding: “Assuming the allegations here are true, this is an absolute aberration in this person’s life.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to him.”

A law enforcement source told Sky’s US partner network, NBC News, on Thursday that the Old Town Road and Industry Baby hitmaker punched an officer twice in the face during the encounter.

The source added officers were unsure whether he was on any substances or in mental distress.

NBC News cited TMZ footage where Hill was seen walking down the middle of Ventura Boulevard at 4am on Thursday in a pair of white briefs and cowboy boots.

In the videos, Hill tells a driver to “come to the party” in one clip and in another tells the person: “Didn’t I tell you to put the phone down?”

“Uh oh, someone’s going to have to pay for that,” Hill says as he continues to walk away.

In some clips, Hill struts as if he’s on a catwalk, posing for onlookers, and at one point he places an orange traffic cone on his head.

Entertainment

Bands pull out from festival after group ‘cut off’ over Palestine flag

Published

2 days ago

August 24, 2025

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Bands pull out from festival after group 'cut off' over Palestine flag

Several bands have pulled out from the Victorious music festival just hours before their scheduled performances, following claims by Irish folk group The Mary Wallopers that they were “cut off” for displaying a Palestinian flag.

The Last Dinner Party, Cliffords, and The Academic announced on Saturday that they would no longer be performing at the annual music festival in Portsmouth following Friday’s incident.

The organisers, who said the band’s set was cut short for using a “discriminatory” chant, have since apologised and promised to make “a substantial donation to humanitarian relief efforts for the Palestinian people”.

Rock band The Last Dinner Party said they are “outraged” by the incident and would boycott the festival.

“We are outraged by the decision made to silence The Mary Wallopers yesterday at Victorious. As a band we cannot cosign political censorship and will therefore be boycotting the festival today,” they said in a statement shared on their Instagram page.

“As Gazans are deliberately plunged into catastrophic famine after two years of escalating violence, it is urgent and obvious that artists use their platform to draw attention to the cause.

“To see an attempt to direct attention away from the genocide in order to maintain an apolitical image is immensely disappointing.”

The Last Dinner Party said that throughout the summer, they have used their performances to encourage their audiences to make donations to a medical charity supporting Palestinians and urged their fans “more than ever to do the same”.

The band said they are “devastated to be put in this position” and apologised to those who were hoping to see them perform.

Following The Mary Wallopers’ set, a spokesperson for Victorious said: “We spoke to the artist before the performance regarding the festival’s long-standing policy of not allowing flags of any kind at the event, but that we respect their right to express their views during the show.

“Although a flag was displayed on stage contrary to our policy, and this was raised with the artist’s crew, the show was not ended at this point, and it was the artist’s decision to stop the song.”

The Mary Wallopers claimed the festival had released a “misleading statement to the press claiming they cut our sound because of a discriminatory chant, and not the band’s call to Free Palestine”.

The band said their video “clearly shows a Victorious crew member coming on stage, interfering with our show, removing the flag from the stage and then the sound being cut following a chant of ‘Free Palestine'”.

“The same crew member is later heard in the video saying ‘you aren’t playing until the flag is removed’,” the band added.

Rock band The Academic have also pulled out of the festival, saying they could not “in good conscience” perform at “a festival that silences free speech”, while Irish band Cliffords said they “refuse to play if we are to be censored for showing our support to the people of Palestine”.

After the bands’ announcements that they were pulling out of the festival, the organisers released another statement, saying that they did not handle “the explanation of our policies sensitively or far enough in advance to allow a sensible conclusion to be reached”, and issued an apology.