Actor: Puppeteer and Puppet Consultant

Steve is well known and highly regarded in television circles as one of Britain’s leading puppeteers and voice artists. His remarkable vocal dexterity and his background as a trained puppeteer as a result of working on Spitting Image offer a unique combination of skills making Steve an accomplished and much sought after voice and puppet performer and puppet consultant. A recent example of work in this area is the highly successful 2004 ITV series, The Dan and Dusty Show, where Steve is the puppeteer and voice behind ‘Dusty’.

Steve’s vocal dexterity is a major asset for any producer looking to cast a multi-character puppet series or film. Not only does Steve have a tremendous range of voices at his disposal, but he also has a remarkable ability to create a specific voice that matches exactly the look of a puppet, so that visual and vocal identity are combined as one.

Film and Television Puppeteering

Steve is co-host of the new 13-part ITV1 comedy series The Dan and Dusty Show where he plays the puppet character ‘Dusty’. ‘Dan and Dusty’ were a famous brother and sister singing duo back in the ’60s and now in one of the great comebacks in showbiz history they have been given their own TV series. Their theme tune is their sixties one-hit wonder, “We Love Each Other As Much As We Can”.

The series is a ‘David Letterman-style’ entertainment with contemporary stand-up comedy, young bands and great magic acts. Dan and Dusty interview fellow celebrities such as Uri Geller, Roland Rivron, Nicholas Parsons, Kate Robbins, Michael Winner, Paul Daniels and Tony Blackburn. They also repeatedly sing their ‘hit’ single from all those years ago, sell their appalling ‘How To…’ DVDs, and offer dubious sexual and marital advice as part of an ‘In Confidence’ slot.

Dan is played by Nigel Plaskitt – the puppeteer and voice behind the famous Hartley Hare in Pipkins.

Transmission began in August 2004 and proved to be a real cult hit.

Cats’ Eyes

This series of forty programmes made for BBC Education Primary Science is widely considered to be one of the best and most successful of its kind. Set in a back street ally, two cats, Jimmy (Steve Nallon) and Juke (William Todd-Jones), observe the goings on of pizza shop owner, Alf (Roland Rivron). In each show the two cats devise new and inventive schemes to keep themselves occupied, such as getting free samples of Alf’s pizzas, breaking into his fridge, making themselves rich and generally having a good time. The plan is always linked to some sort of scientific principle, though most of the educational aspect of the programme comes from the filmed inserts where presenters illustrate the science in detail.

Jimmy and Juke are immensely popular with children. Their antics, combined with the brilliantly illustrated film inserts, have made the series a favourite with both pupils and teachers. The series is aimed at the 5 to 7 age group.

The series began in 1994 and has continued to be broadcast each year up to and including 2003.

Puppet Consultant on Cats’ Eyes

Before the series began Steve was employed as a puppet consultant advising the production team on the design and look of the puppets, the character development of Jimmy and Juke and how best to utilise the cats in the programme. He also suggested ways round some of the technical problems that might be encountered on the show. Steve was also the puppet consultant in the pre-production stage of Crazy Cottage.

Crazy Cottage

Crazy Cottage ran for three successful series on CITV from 1996 to 1998. The idea behind this unusual children’s game show was that it ran “backwards” with the result that all the games were “back to front”, meaning that the right answer was to say the “wrong” answer or that the right answer had to be said the wrong way round. Steve created the character of Vera, a crazy cuckoo and the co-host of this popular series.

Steve can be seen here with his co-presenter, Jez Edwards.

Puppet Consultant on Crazy Cottage

As with Cats’ Eyes Steve was brought in as a puppet consultant on Crazy Cottage before the series began. In early meetings Steve advised the production team as to how Vera should be integrated into the show and how best to play the relationship between her and her co-host, Rick Adams (series one) and, later, Jez Edwards (series two and three).

One important thing to remember in any relationship between puppet and human performer on a children’s show is that a young child mainly takes his or her attitude towards the puppet character from the established attitude of the human performer to the puppet. If the attitude of the human presenter to the puppet is negative then the child’s attitude is also likely to be negative or at least confused. This is a simple rule but it is worth noting how many children’s series make the mistake of having a negative ‘go-away’ attitude towards puppet characters, thus undermining their reception and effectiveness with the young children watching the show. (As children get older this rule is less evident, but it is an important point to note when aiming shows at those under the age of ten.)

Steve advised the team that if they wanted the younger viewer to have a positive attitude to Vera then the human host should have a friendly attitude to his co-host. Working closely with production team a very good relationship was achieved between the two hosts and Crazy Cottage went onto be a popular hit with children of all ages. Steve also advised the production team as to the necessary technical requirements to help make the show run smoothly, such as the correct type of microphones, monitor positions on the studio floor and so on.

The Spooks of Bottle Bay

In 1994 and 1995 Steve worked on two series of this popular puppet comedy drama made by Fugitive Films for Carlton Television and Children’s ITV. Steve played numerous characters including Daffy, Lily and Lady Dingledale.

Steve can be seen (right) on set as “Lily”. The band around the head is usually where the microphone is placed as on most puppet shows the voices are done as live.

The House of Gristle

The House of Gristle was a comedy sketch series for Children’s BBC which ran for nine week in the spring of 1994. The main concept behind the show was that an ordinary family, the Gristles, had been given their own television series and so they produced a sort amateur “Family Television Channel”, creating their own special versions of television programmes of the day. The series had parodies, sketches and its own serial. The serial, a comic gothic horror send up called The Curious Case of Dr Van Rental, was later broadcast as a whole in 1995 as a one-off special. In the series Steve played Vera Gristle, the mum of the family, who spent most of her time eating.

What’s Up Doc?

For What’s Up Doc?, Steve created the role of Cassie, a three thousand year old witch who had sadly lost her magic power. This live Saturday morning children’s series was a mixture of sketches, live bands, feature items and celebrity interviews. Whilst on the show Steve interviewed bands such as “Take That” and pop stars such as Dannii Minogue. Steve worked on the programme from 1992 to 1993. The puppet of Cassie was made by the Jim Henson Creature Shop and can be seen at the top of this page, with Steve, all dolled up for her appearance on the Christmas special of 1992.

Cassie ‘poses’ a question to the cast of Baywatch...

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Puppet Consultant on What’s Up Doc?

Before commencing work on What’s Up Doc? Steve had several meetings with the show’s producer Vanessa Hill in order to develop the personality of “Cassie”, short for Cassandra, the prophetically gifted character of Greek legend. Since Cassie was three thousand years old it became the main function of the character to present historical feature items from the “I-was-actually-there” perspective. The comedy came from her incompetence as a witch, somewhat reminiscent of Aunt Clara in the classic American sit-com Bewitched.

The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch centred on the antics of several cats and Dorothee, a popular French television personality. Steve played P.T., a large, very laid-back American panther. The series ran for thirteen thirty minute episodes in 1991 on Channel Four.

Spitting Image

Although Steve is best known for his voice work on Spitting Image, not many people realize that Steve was also a puppeteer on the series. The reason for his becoming a puppeteer is partly historical in that in the early days of Spitting Image the voice and the puppet were done together, “live” so to speak. Steve, along with fellow impressionist Chris Barrie, was therefore trained as a puppeteer in order to combine the roles of voice artist and puppeteer into one. (The original Queen’s voice, for example, was originally provided by the puppeteer and actress Louise Gold, who had played Annie Sue Pig in The Muppet Show.) As a result of numerous technical problems it was decided after the first few shows not to have the same person doing both voice and puppet but instead to have one person operate the puppet with the voice artist standing near by. A little later in the opening series combining puppet and voice as “live” was abandoned altogether in favour of pre-recording all the voices and then have the puppets mime to the voice track in the studio. In 1987 Steve wrote a short article on the working week of Spitting Image for Campus, The Guild Magazine of the University of Birmingham. To read this 1980s perspective on the making of Spitting Image please click here.

A ‘Wizard of Oz’ sketch from Spitting Image. Steve Nallon (left) with the puppet of Douglas Hurd as the Tin Man, also Simon Buckley (centre), Nigel Plaskitt (left) and John Thirtle (below).

One of Steve’s specialities as a puppeteer was to operate the scene stealing white cat. In one memorable sketch the white cat famously stole Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thomson’s Oscar – earning himself a round of applause from cast and crew at the end of filming!

Steve is seen here operating the puppet of the Queen surrounded by members of his family, his sister, Doreen, brother-in-law, Garry, his nephews, Scott (left) and Bryan (sitting, right), and niece Jordan.

Other Puppet Work

Steve performed as a puppeteer on the film Muppet Treasure Island. He has also worked as a puppeteer on numerous film and television commercials. In the German cinema campaign for Camel cigarettes, Steve was that camel.