Steve was involved in this groundbreaking satirical comedy series from the very first broadcast in 1984 to the final programmes in 1996. In all Steve performed in over a hundred shows. He created the character voices for Margaret Thatcher, Sir David Attenborough, Alan Bennett, Roy Hattersley, The Queen Mum (based on Beryl Reid’s “Marlene” character), Robert Runcie (the former Archbishop of Canterbury), Bruce Forsyth, Pope John Paul II (the slow Polish speaking version), Enoch Powell, Harold Wilson, Denis Healey, Shirley Williams, Malcolm Rifkind, Brian Clough, Sir David Frost, Leonard Rossiter, Kenneth Williams, Sir John Gielgud, Edward Heath and many more.

More recently…

Spitting Image continues to generate interest long after the broadcast of 1996 final episode. In 2005, the satirical puppet series was voted Number Ten in the Top ITV programmes of the last five decades. The Story of ITV: The People’s Channel, celebrating ITV’s 50th birthday, heavily featured Spitting Image and included an appearance by Steve Nallon, one of the main voice artists on the show. In a separate programme, 50 Years of ITV, Steve was interviewed as Spitting Image’s longest-serving voice artist. This, though, was not the end of the ‘retro’ interest in the satirical puppet series as Spitting Image was also included in BBC Comedy Connections in February 2005 and ITV1’s Must See TV, broadcast in December 2005. In Must See TV Sanjeev Bhaskar (from The Kumars) took viewers through some of the show’s most famous sketches and puppet characters and introduced several of its major contributors, including impressionist Steve Nallon.

Steve on 50 Years of ITV
To hear some of Steve’s voices, please visit Steve’s Voice Bank.

Spitting Image was honoured with a special evening at the National Film Theatre in December 2005 as part of the bfi’s (British Film Institute) celebration of ITV 50th birthday. In a sell-out event, clips from the series were shown and a panel chaired by The League of Gentleman’s Jeremy Dyson, and including Steve Nallon, John Lloyd (original producer), Louise Gold (puppeteer and first voice of the Queen) and Peter Fluck (caricaturist and creator from the team Fluck and Law), took questions from the enthusiastic and appreciative audience.

Creating Voices…

The real Alan Bennett commenting on his Spitting Image voice said:

“The voice is very good –  although the first time I saw the model, I didn’t recognize myself. For one thing, it’s much better looking than I am. I’m really quite flattered by it all. The only thing that disturbs me is that the guy that does my voice also does Mrs Thatcher. I’m not sure about that.”

Metro News, 24 January 1992

Steve’s Margaret Thatcher voice is seen as the definitive version, “the industry standard” as The Times put it. In Tooth and Claw: The Inside Story of Spitting Image, Lewis Chester wrote:

“Lloyd [John Lloyd, the first Spitting Image producer] rapidly perceived the singularity of Nallon’s interpretation over a host of female applicants... His voice was deemed one of the show’s great assets. It was not so much an impression as an extension, in vocal terms, of what Fluck and Law were doing in rubber. He also had range. Nallon would say that Mrs Thatcher did not have one voice but three. There was the slow deliberate Falklands voice for patriotic occasions, the quick high-pitched Grantham grocery shop voice used to intimidate the House of Commons, and the whispered sincere voice, loaded with intimacy and conviction.”

Lewis Chester, Tooth and Claw: The Inside Story of Spitting Image
(Faber and Faber, 1986)

The press was equally enthusiastic about Steve’s impersonation. Jean Rook wrote:

“He sounds so like her, that viewing him in the flesh made mine creep. I’ve interviewed the PM many times. Hearing what sounded like tape recording of her voice playing inside Mr Nallon’s narrow chest, was unnerving. Nallon doesn’t impersonate Thatcher. He turns from a desk, and turns into her... Nallon, alone, has scratched below Thatcher’s surface and exposed her at her most abrasive.”

The Daily Express, 17 July 1985

In a South Bank Show Special focusing on Spitting Image Steve was interviewed as himself, talking about the series and the role of the voice artist as caricaturist. Steve was also interviewed for a television documentary on the Archbishop of Canterbury called Arch Rivals. The programme showed that Steve’s impression of the late Robert Runcie – as if he were still a small boy who believed in Santa Claus – was highly influential in the public’s perception of the then Archbishop. Even clerics imitating Runcie did Steve’s version of the voice. Steve also worked as a puppeteer on the series.

In this photo from the filming of the 1987 Spitting Image Election Special, Steve is seen playing the role of an unemployed youth being kicked where it hurts by the Spitting Image puppet of Thatcher. In effect the sketch meant Steve “talking to himself” as he played the youth and, of course, also provided the voice of Thatcher!

Puppet Sale at

In July 2000 Steve Nallon helped to launch the sale of over two hundred Spitting Image puppets. Although the series ended in 1996 the puppets have been kept in good health in a large warehouse in the East End of London. However, Roger Law, the show’s founder with his partner Peter Fluck, decided that the time had finally come to say goodbye to the characters he modelled and created over the series’ twelve year run. Because Roger now lives and works half the year in Australia as an art lecturer and intends to retire there in the near future the storage of the puppets was becoming a bit of liability. Although he was offered a considerable sum to bring the series back on to television, Roger concluded that the best thing to do was to put the puppets up for sale. The sell-off to the highest bidder, a fittingly Thatcherite conclusion to the show’s history, became Britain’s first major internet auction. The Spitting Image family were finally put on their bikes and scattered across the world to pastures new. Exactly what their present owners intend to do with the likes of Thatcher, the Pope, Ronnie Corbett, Sting, Prince Charles et al is perhaps best not thought about too deeply.

By kind permission of The Times. Photo: Andrew Parsons

As Steve was one of the founder members of the Spitting Image team and had worked on the show from the first programme to the last, Roger Law asked Steve first to help launch the internet sale and second to preside over a charity auction in aid of the Hackney Empire. In the final result, the puppet of Margaret Thatcher at $15,250 was the highest single bid of the 300 lots. Two other caricatures of the former Prime Minister fetched $7,200 and $6,100. Other puppets characters associated with Steve included Roy Hattersley ($3,750), Enoch Powell ($2,901), Pope John Paul II ($2,850) and Robert Runcie ($1,500).

Steve Nallon at the Sotheby’s Sale of Spitting Image puppets.

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The charity sale in aid of the Hackney Empire on 12 July 2000 was widely reported in the press. Here is The Evening Standard’s summary of the evening’s event:

“It was sometimes a little difficult to tell who were the real politicians when a clutch of Spitting Image puppets went under the hammer last night. Hardly had the sale in aid of the £15 million restoration of Hackney Empire begun at Sotheby’s than in strode Margaret Thatcher in her familiar blue suit. Or was it she? It certainly sounded like Mrs Thatcher as she informed the crowded salesroom in booming tones that the evening was “to raise money to restore the Empire”.

In fact, she sounded so like Mrs. Thatcher that it clearly wasn’t her but Steve Nallon, who provided the voice for her latex likeness during the Thatcher years.”

Robin Stringer, Art Correspondent, Evening Standard,
13 July 2000

The charity auction raised over £15,000 for the theatre restoration project.