| The Images Which Left The Royals Spitting Mad |
|
|
|
| Written by Joanne Leyland | |
| Wednesday, 29 March 2006 | |
|
Page 4 of 5 The latex puppets were often seen (rightly or wrongly) as a true extension of the royals themselves: Prince Charles was depicted as eccentric and weak; Philip was a foul-mouthed bully; the Queen's second son, at the time a very socially active bachelor, really was 'Randy Andy' — the BBC banned their radio stations from playing a Spitting Image-produced record depicting 'Andrew' singing I'm Just A Prince Who Can't Say No; 'Fergie' (Sarah, Duchess of York) was a greedy, lazy wife and mother who, determined only to have a good time, didn't know who her own baby daughter was; and Diana was portrayed as something of an airhead, obsessed with little more than looking good and getting the better of her increasingly large sister-in-law Fergie. It has been claimed that Spitting Image, which at its peak enjoyed an audience of 12 million, helped destroy Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Government, depicting as it did Britain's first female Prime Minister as an increasingly power mad 'dictator'. 
 By 1992 the joke had worn thin. Even Spitting Image couldn't 'better' the real life soap opera that was the House of Windsor. Reality truly had exceeded satire.Although the programme makers, Peter Fluck and Roger Law, agreed to bring the puppets back to life in the mid-1990s, at which point we were introduced to new characters such as Camilla Parker Bowles and upper class schoolboy Prince William, the show never again achieved the success and publicity of the 1980s. Soon, end was nigh for the unexpected television hit, the story of the Royal Family now having little entertainment value. Three of the show's greatest characters were now out of bounds: Diana was dead at a tragically young age, and the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret — once portrayed performing a saucy strip — were suffering increasingly bad health. |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
