World of Puppets - Spitting Image and Beyond

At 10pm on a Sunday night in 1984, Peter Fluck and Roger law’s caricatures of the famous were unveiled to British audiences. Frequently crass and tasteless, but just as often hilarious, the caricatures of Spitting Image were to offend, outrage and amuse. Its format, of a satirical comedy sketch show with puppets rather than live actors, was inventive and at times surreal. The puppets themselves, built out of latex, were often the show’s strongest attribute. Some of Spitting Image’s sketches were shot and edited only hours before the show went on the airwaves, thus ensuring a fresh up-to-date topicality. The brash, uncompromising scripts kept the viewer’s attention, although it was sometimes awkward viewing.

Spitting Image prayed on well known faces, from the Royals to MPs. In the early days, the Independent Television Authority censors demanded cuts. One scene they disliked was that of a puppet Harold Wilson MP tipping hot soup onto himself. The Conservatives were shocked at the constant “micky-taking” of the Royals, complaining that “they can’t answer back.” One politician was quoted to say that Spitting Image would “denigrate what we hold most dear.” Royalists could not believe that the Queen Mother was shown as a common, stupid, horse racing fan, complete with Brumme accent. No one complained, however, when Colonel Gaddafi was blown up as he opened the winners award envelope for International Terrorist of the Year.

On its first night, Spitting Image received an audience rating of 7.9 million, but the numbers dropped rapidly. Only three weeks after its premiere, the show was facing the axe. Spitting Image cost almost twice as much as a prime time sitcom - around £2.6 million for the first 12 episodes - so economies were desperately needed if it was to survive. The comedy in the early scripts were uneven, and Fluck and Law’s inexperience with puppetry shone through. However, by the next season, with better script writing, improved puppet performances and a more efficient production, the problems were ironed out and the protesters became worn down and quieter, if not altogether silent. The audiences grew, topping 12.6 million in January 1986. Spitting Image continued on our screens for twelve years, before being laid to rest in 1996, making it the most successful adult orientated puppet television programme ever.

Viewers tuned into Spitting Image to laugh at the abuse and parody of the rich and powerful. The humour was greatly aided by the use of puppetry. The latex creations could be used to provide some very surreal images, for instance Kenneth Baker as a slug. Caricatures in the Spitting Image mould could not have been produced as effectively by any other method. Animation could have shown the ugly caricatures, but would not have captured the exaggerated human qualities that the puppets portrayed. At Spitting Image’s height of popularity, the mention of Labour politician, Roy Hattersley, produced a vision of Spitting Image’s salivating caricature, not the real human MP. Sometimes the show's victims claimed they did not mind their puppet likenesses. Snooker player, Stephen Hendry, even mentioned that his spotty puppet was handsome. Tory MP Michael Heseltine was one who attempted to purchase his puppet. After agreeing to pay £7500 for the privilege, he stormed out when he was asked to make the cheque payable to “The Labour Party”, thus proving that the abuse was not just confined to the television screen.

Spitting Image, in a similar fashion to The Storyteller, held many characteristics of pre-television puppetry. The writer George Speaight commented that Spitting Image was a “piece of adult satire… that might have been played in a Berlin cabaret in the twenties.” Looking even further back, Punch and Judy in its heyday had a lot in common with Spitting Image, with religious or political figures turning up to be ridiculed in a satirical format. Today, however, Punch and Judy itself has become children’s entertainment. A once adult satirical show dropping to the level of slapstick children’s viewing.

Satirical television puppetry was not new, however, as some “kiddie’s” shows have portrayed a surprising political air. The 1960s puppet show, Pinky and Perky, originally intended purely for infants but quickly given a more adult slot, received as much fan mail as The Beatles. The BBC banned one episode of Pinky and Perky in 1966 for being overtly political. The episode, titled You Too Could Be Prime Minister, was eventually aired and obtained more viewers than Harold Wilson’s party political broadcast shown on ITV at the same time. Puppets and satire appear to go hand in hand.

Many of the places that puppets are used on television are not so obvious as the likes of Pinky and Perky and Spitting Image. An area that puppetry is of great importance to adult viewers is the horror genre. One classic series of spine chilling stories was Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. During one episode, the viewers were introduced to a bed-ridden man, terrified of a clown puppet at the bottom of his bed. The puppet spoke to him, and eventually murdered him in cold blood. The use of the puppet, especially ventriloquist’s dummies and clowns, is a well used plot device for terror in horror tales. Considering how many people hold some fear for the puppet, it is perhaps strange that puppetry has become known as the art for the child. The fact that the clown, originally intended as innocent, is often thrown in with the puppet as scary, is in itself interesting. It is human nature to distrust and fear the non-human aspect of both clowns and puppets. Both are non-human in different ways, but both can be disconcerting. Animal puppets, such as some muppet stars, are not usually as frightening, although they hold certain human characteristics. Human mannequin style puppets can appear “dead” when they are not in use, and when they do move it can appear that they are moving by themselves, with evil secret agenda, the out of sight puppeteer being forgotten. It is perhaps this fear that harks back more than anything to the pagan rituals and black magic of early puppetry.

However, puppetry is even more important to the horror genre than simply a plot device. The complicated effects of today’s spine chilling tales of werewolves and the like involve many different components, one of which is an advanced area of puppetry - animatronics. In comparison to other genres, there has never been a huge amount of horror stories produced inclusively for television. However, many horror films produced for the cinema are broadcast, although the more gory elements are often edited. Puppets flourish in these types of movies. Not just in the obvious devil doll film Child’s Play, but also in film such as The Fly and Alien. It is tales of this nature that illustrate so fully that puppets are not all furry monsters and wisecracking pigs, but an important and at times horrific element of television and film production.