Roger Law (I)

Spitting Image - in pictures

We take a look at Spitting image puppets creaated by Roger Law for the famous TV satire.

I never knew how much I missed Spitting Image until I watched Arena: Whatever Happened To Spitting Image (BBC Four). Imagine, 15million people a week used to tune into a bunch of puppets savaging politicians. We actually cared enough about what was going on to do that.

True, puppeteers Peter Fluck and Roger Law and the rest of the Spitting Image team struck satirical gold in the form of Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative cabinet but are things really so much better now? Just because we're adrift in the politics of the bland, does that mean they should be spared the comedic water cannon?

My guess is if someone brought back Spitting Image now, it could be an enormous hit. But has anyone got the latex balls to try it? Would they be hit with law suits the minute they went on air? Those questions won't be bothering the creators, who cheerily admitted their programme was the product of angry, youthful loins.

"I don't throw my dinner at the television any more," said Fluck (or it might have been Law). "That's a good sign."

It turned out the only people who survived the high-intensity Spitting Image workload had high energy or were on drugs. Or quite probably both.

Now settled back in middle age, Law (or it might have been Fluck) ruefully recognised that where once they thought they'd change the world, now they knew "it doesn't change anything". However, someone really should be trying.

Radio Times review

During the 1980s, you hadn't truly made it until you'd been immortalised in latex by the Spitting Image team. A complete one-off, the show's grotesque netherworld of freakish caricatures connected young people with politics like nothing before or since. Nobody was more savagely satirised than the Thatcher cabinet, but when that enemy was no longer a threat, the show's appeal gradually waned.

In this deadpan Arena film, its creators and contributors chronicle the series, from the embryonic commissioning stage to its decline in popularity during the 90s. At its peak, Spitting Image was getting 15 million viewers but, "If we did it [now]," says co-creator Roger Law, "we'd be a cult thing, probably on the net". And you can't help thinking he's right. They'd never get away with such vicious satire on TV today.

Roger Law on Thatcher and Spitting Image

The harder we tried to undermine Thatcher's policies, the more successful Spitting Image became. We even tried portraying her as a pleasant person; it did not work.

Spitting Image creators remember Margaret Thatcher

'The show was harsh and confrontational because Thatcher was harsh and confrontational' says co-creator Roger Law.

Spitting Image gallery

In a Radio Times exclusive ahead of the general election, Spitting Image co-creator Roger Law gave the magazine his take on the party leaders. See his fantastic caricatures and take a look back at some other Spitting Image greats.

The story of an attempt to start a Russian version of Spitting Image after the fall of Communism was funny and fascinating.

What a terrific half-hour's radio Spitting in Russian turned out to be. The story of how Spitting Image translated to Moscow when ambitious young programme makers there decided to launch TV satire in the newly post-Communist era, it was full of lovely details, rich sardonic cackles - the kind that only satirists do properly - and giddying twists in Russian media freedoms.

Spitting Image co-founder Roger Law made the most charismatic narrator, too, with a healthy relish for the absurd. He reminisced about travelling to Moscow in 1993 to sell the show's franchise, with endless meetings ("they had no real idea how capitalism worked") and less than enthusiastic staff gathering to meet him. They removed their jackets, he remembered, and then "stayed asleep all through my lecture".

The programme also featured an array of clever, funny contributions from experts on Russian media, art and politics. They explained how satire briefly flourished on television, but quickly melted away with the assassination of a television executive connected to a satirical show, and the state takeover of independent stations.

One director who did broadcast a satirical puppet show explained the sudden demise of his popular programme. "If it had been a totalitarian regime," he said, "they would have shot us. Because it's an authoritarian regime, they just closed us down."