Spitting Image has just returned to British television once more, but back in 1986 the satirical puppet show was hitting its stride and made a two-part special for NBC in the US (‘Spitting at Uncle Sam’, 20 April 1986).
That’s Teddy Kennedy and Jack Nicholson on the cover having their heads banged together by William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry (remember him?) of the Chicago Bears. The Observer Magazine wondered whether the Americans would be able to take the sort of punishment meted out to British politicians: ‘True, America loved Monty Python, but that merely poked fun at the Brits, confirming our reputation for looniness and eccentricity. Spitting Image is of an altogether beastlier order.’
Indeed it was. Although, according to one of the show’s writers, John O’Farrell, Edwina Currie used to beg to be on it, which became part of the problem – politicians would try to use it as preferment and, to misquote Groucho Marx, anyone who wanted to be on it, shouldn’t have been allowed to be.
An all-American cast of puppets was created, including a saucer-eyed Liza Minnelli, a weirdly toothless Richard Nixon looking like a grumpy golfer, a strawberry-nosed Walter Matthau and an elongated George Bush. It was claimed that ‘latex lampooners Peter Fluck and Roger Law have gone out of their way to give the sputum and the vomit flecks a real home-grown American flavour’, but it gave the impression of punching down, especially in the unoriginal caricature of Sylvester Stallone, comparing him to Ronald Reagan as ‘another actor with the mental agility of a gas pump’.
As comedians Sarah Cooper and Kylie Scott have realised with Donald Trump, the best way to satirise him is not through the distorting lens of caricature or impression, but to use his own words verbatim. Besides, he’s already someone else’s puppet.
