Double Take

Birmingham graduate Steve Nallon is
Spitting Image of Margaret Thatcher…

“Wave your dollies in the air” may seem a somewhat unusual demand to receive at the beginning of a working day. Such a thought would be in error, for the ‘dollies’ are Spitting Image puppets and waving is what I am paid to do.

I left Birmingham University in 1983 with an Honours Degree in English and Drama. Within six months I was offered a job as the back end of the pantomime horse in a Christmas production at Theatr Clwyd. Since my insistence on top billing was not negotiable I left North Wales to return to Birmingham. I was greeted by a pile of letters on the doormat consisting of rejections and one audition offer. On the day of the audition I received two letters. The first cancelled the audition due to ill health and the second came from a then unknown company called Spitting Image who were replying to a letter, apparently redirected to them, which I had sent to Central Television. This letter invited me to meet John Lloyd, the producer of Spitting Image, to discuss my suggestion that I provide the voice of the Prime Minister. We met, I got the job and the rest is a footnote in the history of Light Entertainment.

Spitting Image was, of course, a tremendous failure. It was panned by the critics and ignored by the viewers (a low of under two million was recorded one week which is slightly lower than Bewitched repeats on Channel Four). Twelve episodes had been planned and three had been made and transmitted when talks began to bring the programme to a premature and merciful end. However, madness prevailed and all contracts were fulfilled. By episode twelve we had more or less worked out how to make what we now know as Spitting Image. After much doubt a second series did return and was, of course, a tremendous hit. In spite of attempts to turn it into tasteful family viewing, it remains very popular.

The working week

My working week begins on a Thursday afternoon in London for the read through. As a puppeteer I read characters I will operate rather than the voices I provide. Mrs Thatcher is operated by a Texan puppeteer and so her speeches sound more life a Dallas gigolo and are often postscripted by a loud “this sucks” if the jokes are seen by American eyes to be unfunny. The only regular character for which I provide both voices and puppeteering skills is the Queen Mum who in Spitting Image is really Beryl Reid in another hat but “with a bit more fruit on it, luvs”.

Saturday is the voice recording day. We record the show that will go out the following Sunday as well as topical sketches (“topicals”) for the next night’s show. On Sunday morning at 9.30 we begin to record the four or five minutes of topical material that will be transmitted that night. This takes us up until lunch time.

After lunch we begin to record the show that will go out in one week’s time. We finish at 8.00 pm. (Ten hour days in television are standard working practice.) Monday and Tuesday are also spent in the studio. Wednesday and Friday are technically days off, though puppets are often required for promotions and other television appearances.

There are on average about six voice-over perfomers and eight puppeteers working on the programme. Musicians and singers also add to the numbers and the expense. (Spitting Image is the most expensive Light Entertainment programme ever made.) The voice-over people often end up doing sketches talking to themselves. I do the voices of Runcie, Hattersley and various others as well as Mrs Thatcher. These character combinations are avoided but are sometimes inevitable. (You may remember Miss Piggy rarely spoke to Fossie Bear since Frank Oz did both voices.) The puppets are life-size and a single puppet often requires three operators. One puppeteer moves the moth and an arm, another a second arm and a third the eye mechanism. The sets are two feet higher than reality and so when the puppets are lifted above our heads they are literally put into a world of their own. Television monitors on the floor are our only view into this world as we cannot actually look directly at what we are doing simply because if we did you would see our heads.

A growing business

Mrs Thatcher is an odd industry to be in. Although I am one of the many employed in this growing business, I am reaching a stage where I may be referred to the Monopolies Commission. Far from being singular and restrictive, the "It's Thatcher" industry has allowed me to sing with a symphony orchestra conducted by Carl Davis, appear at the Royal Albert Hall and the London Palladium, inform the real Dr David Owen in early April 1987 that I, Margaret Thatcher, had decided the date of the election would be June 11th, work with both Ben Elton and Jimmy Tarbuck, meet Carol Thatcher who thought ‘mother’ would find it ‘terribly funny’ that I did Roy Hattersley as well, perform live to nine nations speaking in English, French and German underneath a table somewhere between the legs of the head of the IBA and the Director of Programmes for Central Television, and, perhaps most importantly, learn to name drop even better than David Lodge.