The Heckler: how funny really was Spitting Image?

Hold the front page! Spitting Image is back! Well, sort of. A new six-part series, from (some of) the team behind Fluck and Law’s puppetry satire show, will be broadcast on ITV this spring. Called Newzoids, it promises to provide a ‘biting look at the world of politics and celebrity’. Cue ecstatic reports in all the papers about how hilarious the original was, and how much we’ve all missed it. There’s only one problem with this analysis. Whisper it on Wardour Street, but Spitting Image wasn’t actually all that funny.

Yes, the voices were pin-sharp (shout-outs for Rory Bremner, Steve Coogan, Hugh Dennis, Harry Enfield, Alistair McGowan and a host of others) but, despite the input of writers like Ian Hislop and Richard Curtis, the breathless scripts reflected the frantic deadlines that the show’s topicality required. Yes, the puppets were works of art (take a bow, Peter Fluck and Roger Law, and all the puppet-makers who served under them) but for much of its 12-year run Spitting Image was often far funnier with the sound turned down.

Contrary to popular opinion, Spitting Image wasn’t remotely subversive. Depicting Margaret Thatcher as a bossy man surrounded by spineless Tory wets merely bolstered her carefully cultivated public image. Tony Benn? Mad. Michael Foot? A doddery old man in a donkey jacket. This wasn’t fearless satire. It was more like the front page of the Sun.

The songs were especially cringeworthy. ‘I’ve Never Met A Nice South African’ achieved the almost impossible feat of out-stereotyping the white architects of apartheid. Even at the time, the slobbering Roy Hattersley puppet was embarrassing. Either Hattersley didn’t have a speech impediment (in which case the joke made no sense) or he did (in which case it was about as witty as impersonating Stephen Hawking).