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I tried to get back to work today, but my brain wasn't quite in it - it had been a very early start with the boy and I couldn't apply myself. I was trying to write up an idea I'd had for the new series of Spitting Image. I am not officially on the writing team (though they had gauged to see if I was interested) but an idea occurred to me that encompassed a few of my current obsessions and they've said they'll look at it if I write it.
Writing for Spitting Image (on spec to begin with if I remember rightly) was one of my first jobs back in the early 90s, so it was weird to be back here, even if I was largely failing to be inspired. It was a huge thrill back then to get to go to the Spitting Image workshop and see the store of puppets and the team that made them and to meet Roger Law, who was very supportive of Stew and I.
We wrote lots of sketches, but I think only got two on - a running ) one about Mr Kipling's friend - the guy who narrated the adverts, and Mr Kipling getting increasingly frustrated with his cake obsession (it was an idea I would also use in Richard Herring is Fat) - [oooh look I've found it on Youtube -
Part 1 Part 2 - I definitely wrote more than this and the progress was a bit more subtle in the multi-part version] and one about Dot Cotton and Arnold Schwarzenegger being quite an unlikely pairing of cops who initially don't like each other and then realise they complement each other. My favourite thing we wrote was called Bill Dare's Bottom. The producer was (and still is) called Bill Dare and the sketch involved his bottom appearing in the sky. Obviously this was never going to get on, but we had fun writing it and back in those days we could afford to waste our time writing stuff just for the lols and to make the producer laugh as he read through our other submissions.
We also went on to write a booklet for the video release “Is it Sacred?†Which was a nice job to be given and it was kind of them to employ two struggling writers even though our hit rate on the actual show was relatively light. I think they saw something in us though. We tried to get the Organ Gang off the ground with them too, but it came to nothing and ended up being an unsatisfactory segment on TMWRMJ a few years later, rather than the genuine kids' show that it should have been.
I have long had an association with puppets (good and bad) and perhaps Spitting Image was my spiritual home. Interestingly all the ideas that made it on air and the Organ Gang were mine. I think we probably wrote better sketches than the ones that aired together, but they might not have been in the right voice for the series. I suspect that's why they kept us around, as they thought we might amount to something. I suppose they were largely correct.
So it would be quite satisfying to get back on Spitting Image 30 years later and have a hand in both incarnations. But it might be a young man's job. Writing succinct and crowd-pleasing sketches is a skill we were forced to learn early on as that was where all the work is, but neither of us were huge fans of the format, both yearning to stretch stupid and unpalatable ideas to their limit and beyond.
Now that I can do unpalatable ideas for years on end and no one can stop me, it's not easy to slip back into that greater skill of expressing one idea with brevity, but I will persevere and see if I can get my name on the credits of the show again. Must find out the name of the producer and submit a sketch which is a terrible pun on their surname. Or just do a sketch about their bottom (I am pretty sure we did resubmit that sketch to something else with a producer with a totally different surname, so it made absolutely no sense at all).
