Spitting Image: Difference between revisions

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* '''Thatcher's Cabinet at the Restaurant''': Mrs Thatcher's cabinet eat at a restaurant; she orders a raw steak, and when asked "What about the vegetables?" replies "They'll have the same as I'm having." (This line entered her legend, and people later thought she had really said it.)

** According to ''[[Private Eye]]'', one ''Cabinet minister'' not only thought he was ''there'' when she said it, but [[Cannot Tell a Joke|totally screwed up the punchline]] ("And the waitress asked 'what will the vegetables have?'")

* '''The President's Brain is Missing''': A series in which [[Ronald Reagan]]'s tiny brain makes a bid for freedom, at one point crawling into the dead Premier Chernenko's head and reanimating him to try and run the Soviet Union on American Republican lines. Half the jokes it coined were later lazily recycled by [[Spiritual Successor]] ''2DTV'' for [[George W Bush]].

* '''The President's Brain is Missing''': A series in which [[Ronald Reagan]]'s tiny brain makes a bid for freedom, at one point crawling into the dead Premier Chernenko's head and reanimating him to try and run the Soviet Union on American Republican lines. Half the jokes it coined were later lazily recycled by [[Spiritual Successor]] ''2DTV'' for [[George W. Bush]].

* '''John Major and the Peas''': Captured the public vision of [[John Major]] as dull and boring by literally giving him grey skin and having him indulge in inane conversations over peas with his wife Norma. It was also suggested that he had a crush on Virginia Bottomley, the writers proceeding to kick themselves for not choosing [[Reverse Funny Aneurysm|Edwina Currie]] instead.

* '''The Two Davids''': The Liberal-SDP Alliance was portrayed as an unequal partnership between the dominating SDP leader David Owen and the shy, literally smaller Liberal leader David Steel. Steel later blamed his depiction for ruining his career- Steel was taller!

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== Tropes of [[Spitting Image]] ==

* [[Bad Cop Incompetent Cop]]: If you replace the words 'cop' with 'politician', you have the show's general portrayal of the Conservatives and Labour. To be exact, they portray the conservatives as evil money-hungry people with victorian values (and empathy), but point out that Labour was too incompetent to be worth voting for, so no-one did.

* [[Bad Cop, Incompetent Cop]]: If you replace the words 'cop' with 'politician', you have the show's general portrayal of the Conservatives and Labour. To be exact, they portray the conservatives as evil money-hungry people with victorian values (and empathy), but point out that Labour was too incompetent to be worth voting for, so no-one did.

* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: You can hear President Mitterrand call Margaret a cow at one point. Plus the other puppet in the Ian Paisley ''Night Thoughts'' sketch is actually doing [[Shown Their Work|proper sign language]].

** In the Derek Jameson sketch about German television, Chris Barrie is speaking real German.

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* [[Butt Monkey]]: Sir Geoffrey Howe.

* [[Conspiracy Theorist]]: HAROLD ANGRYPERSON.

* [[Cross Dressing Voices]]: Steve Nallon as [[Margaret Thatcher]].

* [[Cross-Dressing Voices]]: Steve Nallon as [[Margaret Thatcher]].

* [[Enfant Terrible]]: Prince William in the early series.

* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]: The first season pales compared to later seasons. The pilot episode had a laugh track (which was abandoned quickly from the next episode on). Certain puppets look and sound different because the voice actors didn't always comically exaggarate the voices of the lampooned celebrities in the first season. Many episodes in the first season follow plot lines that are continued like a chronological series, while later seasons were always stand alone episodes.the early series.

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* [[Flanderization]]: Arguably, as the years progressed the show became less about political satire per se, and more about the antics of absurdist caricatures of politicians, which had evolved in rather extreme ways. Thatcher, for instance, increasingly became a run-of-the-mill tyrant, whose extreme brand of supervillian evil stopped being much of a commentary on British conservatism. Many other politicians similarly evolved into various stock characters that eclipsed their original politicized roots, for example Norman Tebbit as a gang banger, Cecil Parkinson as the Cabinet's resident [[The Casanova|Casanova]], John Major as a dullard, and Kenneth Baker, originally depicted as an oozing sycophant, who literally became a slug in later episodes.

* [[Gag Boobs]]: Claire Rayner.

* [[Glass Shattering Sound]]: Thatcher's voice in one sketch. Then she got voice coaching... and ended up sounding like Hitler.

* [[Glass-Shattering Sound]]: Thatcher's voice in one sketch. Then she got voice coaching... and ended up sounding like Hitler.

* [[Good Angel, Bad Angel]]: Neil Kinnock has Michael Foot as his angel and Jim Callaghan as his devil while he wrestles over whether or not to reappear on ''The Tube''. {{spoiler|He compromises by saying that he can't as he is rehearsing for ''[[Last of the Summer Wine]]'', which pleases them both.}}

* [[Henpecked Husband]]: Denis Thatcher.

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* [[Refuge in Audacity]]: Frequently, but most notably Thatcher taking advice from an elderly Hitler and the entire Conservative cabinet singing ''[[Cabaret|Tomorrow Belongs To Me]].''

* [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]]: Any sketch with Jonathan Miller.

* [[Shout Out]]: One to both ''[[Dallas]]'' and ''[[Psycho (Film)|Psycho]]'' which takes place in alternate reality where Margaret dreamed being in power and [[Edward Heath]] was still prime minister. She then stabs him in the shower, spraying the walls with [[Stealth Pun|blue blood]].

* [[Shout-Out]]: One to both ''[[Dallas]]'' and ''[[Psycho (Film)|Psycho]]'' which takes place in alternate reality where Margaret dreamed being in power and [[Edward Heath]] was still prime minister. She then stabs him in the shower, spraying the walls with [[Stealth Pun|blue blood]].

* [[Sketch Comedy]]

* [[Spiritual Successor]]: [[Your Mileage May Vary|Arguably]] the successor to ''[[Not the Nine O Clock News]]''. The spiritual successors to ''Spitting Image'' itself were the traditionally animated ''2DTV'', the live action ''[[Dead Ringers (TV)|Dead Ringers]]'' and the CGI ''[[Headcases]]'' (the latter was the only one which was actually advertised as a successor ''Spitting Image'', but it was probably the least successful).

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[[Category:Puppet Shows]]

[[Category:Spitting Image]]

[[Category:Trope]]