Interview: Remembering Spitting Image
Spitting Image: The Complete Series 1-7 Box Set
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Monday, 02, Nov 2009 10:52
Thirteen years after the show ended, one of the stars of Spitting Image tells us why satire is dead
By Matthew Champion.
Iconic 1980s satire Spitting Image actually ran for 12 years until 1996, taking pot-shots at everyone in the public eye from Ronald Reagan to the Pope.
A host of grotesque puppets and its famous portrayal of Margaret Thatcher as a bald man wearing a wig and a business suit made it a household name, while The Chicken Song became a surprise hit in the charts.
To mark the release of the seven-disc box set of series one to seven of the show, inthenews.co.uk caught up with Kate Robbins, who worked alongside Rory Bremner, John Sessions, Steve Coogan and Harry Enfield to voice pretty much everyone.
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The PR for this interview told me that you can't stop doing impressions even when you're nowhere near a camera or a microphone...
I know it's terrible isn't it, like a disease...
Who in the public eye at the moment can you not resist taking off?
I mean people like Barbara Windsor leaving EastEnders - that kind of voice would be great, if she was a spitting image puppet now she'd be fantastic.
Also when you're watching things like Strictly Come Dancing you listen to Tess Daly, standing next to Bruce Forsyth so different with her bold, northern accent, she's be good to do, there's loads of people if they were to bring Spitting Image back.
Have you seen the papers today by the way?
I have...
My daughter's in the Sun... I've been speaking to PR people about it all morning. Mucca v Macca. My daughter's Emily Atack from Inbetweeners, anyway that's all going on so... We didn't know Heather was going to be in it. So I'm trying to do the interviews but then I've also got people on to me going 'is your daughter in Dancing on Ice?' and I'm saying 'no comment' and they go 'that means yes'. Cos you're not meant to reveal who's in it yet.
Emily's really good at impressions as well funnily enough.
Like a family thing?
It is a family thing, she's absolutely brilliant. But obviously in her role in the Inbetweeners she's a comedy actress doing a character and she's in the new Only Fools and Horses at Christmas as well but it's in the family as well, definitely.
Is that something she might think about going into?
She doesn't want to, she does them all the time and I say 'you could make a living doing this' and she says 'no Mum, you keep doing that, I won't take that job of you'.
Spitting Image ran for 12 years from 1984 to 1996, are you surprised it did seeing as though it was such an iconic 80s thing?
I just think the great thing about Spitting Image was young people knew who the shadow cabinet was in those days, if you asked people now who was in the Cabinet, never mind the shadow cabinet, they wouldn't know the answer. And I think it gave young people an interest in politics in a fun way whereas now no one has an interest in it really. Who cares who the leader of the Liberal party is? But then it was Paddy Pantsdown and all these silly names...
Do you think people would recognise Jack Straw's puppet?
Jack Straw's got quite a strong visual image, but certainly the women, the certain group of women in the Labour party all look the same... there's a certain hairstyle. They've all got this hairdo that's the same hairstyle... so you could have one puppet for the Labour women and say it's all the same person.
Who's the woman whose husband was involved with Berlusconi and then they separated?
Tessa Jowell
Tessa Jowell, Jacqui Smith and Harriet Harman all look the same. For me it's the same person. There definitely could have been a generic puppet for all three with just the one wig. And then they could have put on a little red wig for that little feisty one...
Hazel...
Thank you, Hazel Blears! Well done for knowing all the names
Do you think it's a shame the show ended just before Labour came in or is it partly because no one could get a handle on Tony Blair?
That's a very good question. No, I think we would have been just as ruthless with the Labour government to be honest. I think whichever government is in you have to have a go at them, have a pop at them. We were all quite left-wing if truth be told but when Labour got in everyone said it was just the Tory party in disguise, so we would have had a right go at them anyway.
It wasn't like the mission was over now the Tories were gone?
No! 'The Tories have gone, the mission is over'... I like that
The Tories are probably going to come back in next year...
What did you just say then, it made me feel sick?
I'm really sorry, but I think we should face up to opinion polls... Do you think it's primetime for a Spitting Image return?
Oh, I think so don't you... yeah bring it back, I say
How do you think the current crop would fare?
Well Anne Widdecombe's got to be top of the list of puppets
She's leaving though.
I know, what a shame! She didn't quite make it as speaker, that voice she has! It's like a yodel! 'Order, order!'
Who were your favourite people to poke fun at?
I liked doing Sarah Ferguson the best because I gave her this stupid laugh, I used to have her saying jokes like 'they've named a pudding after me at Buckingham Palace, it's called ginger sponge [laughs/snort]'. She never did that in her life but it just suited the puppet really. And I used to make Margaret Beckett sound like Ken Dodd because she used to have very messy hair. It was just so silly really. People say they were great impressions, they weren't, they were just daft characterisations really
Was that the main motivation of the creators or was it from a satire perspective?
I think we were on a roll, once talented people like Harry Enfield, Rory Bremner, John Sessions, Steve Coogan, people like that they went with it, they turned these characters into complete grotesque caricatures which were very silly. The Douglas Hurd puppet that Harry used to do was nothing like him, but it was hilarious. And it was just really ridiculous, but I think the lynchpin of it all was Steve Nallon's genius Margaret Thatcher, as her teeth got slightly more wobbly we used to make her slightly whistly. It was great fun.
If Spitting Image did come back would the grotesque puppets have to come back too?
The problems Spitting Image had, it could never portray a pretty woman, because they were all so grotesque; the Princess Diana puppet was grotesque and obviously she was a beautiful woman and it didn't really work but, you know, anyone who was even slightly dodgy came out fantastic. I liked doing the singing ones because I sang The Chicken Song and I was number one for ten weeks or something ridiculous, that was my singing voice doing that so that was good fun.
Can you ever see something like that happening again, a similar show in a similar vein putting out a song that went to number one?
Oh, I don't know, no. Satire seems to be dead at the moment, we need to bring it back I think.
Who do you blame for that?
Boring politicians, political correctness and, possibly, a lack of writers. I think most writers now just want to get a sitcom or a movie or a screenplay, they don't want to put in those masses of political stretches like they used to have to. They'd start off on weekending on radio then they'd go on to doing a topical show then they'd be writing. There was that thing of writers churning them out, now there's no real sketch shows with politics in. Rory writes a lot of his own stuff so he doesn't really need any writers.
You also worked on the first series of Dead Ringers, which lasted for seven years. Do you think it's strange impression shows seem to come and go?
Well I think impressions come and go as a fashion, after I was a pop singer in the early 80s I started doing impressions and ended up thinking 'is this cool to do this?', and then I ended up with my own impression show and I didn't think it was cool at all, and then I left and started doing Spitting Image which was really cool so it just went in waves of fashion. Doing impressions was a bit looked down on if you like, on Spitting Image all my contemporaries were doing stand-up or what was termed alternative comedy and you know, everyone would go to the Edinburgh festival and no one would dream of taking impressions, but Spitting Image made it more trendy. I would never want to do an impressionist show again, not visually, I'm too long in the tooth, but I loved doing it.
Kate Robbins can be seen alongside Harry Hill in Soapington Way on ITV1 next year. Spitting Image: The Complete Series 1-7 Box Set is out now priced £59.99