Characters / Spitting Image

Politicians

The Conservative Party

Margaret Thatcher

• Bald of Evil: CRIMINAL LIBEL investigates the theory that she's secretly bald, and that Mark and Denis are exploiting this fact to stop any investigation into their business activities.
• Big Bad: Portrayed as almost more evil than Satan himself.
• Did You Get A New Hair Cut: In one particular sketch, she did. Turns out she now has the snake hair of Medusa. She also had Glowing Eyes of Doom and looked at Kenneth Baker with a death stare until he turned to stone and crumbled.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Her puppet grew more grotesque and ugly-looking as the seasons progressed.
• Girls With Mustaches: Implied; she's sometimes shown shaving her face.
• The Lad-ette: Not so much on the Lower-Class Lout aspects of this trope, but she is regularly portrayed as more masculine than her almost entirely male cabinet or her husband. She often wears a suit and tie, and is sometimes shown shaving her face or trying to cultivate some facial like a beard or a moustache.
• Stiff Upper Lip: Her position on cruise missiles being deployed in Britain:
  "How many times do we have to go through this? All it takes is the right attitude and you can withstand anything."
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: She occasionally sleeps in a Union Jack housecoat.

Nigel Lawson

• Fat Idiot: Is shown as being incapable of doing basic mental maths despite being the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
• Vocal Dissonance: His voice became more sloshed to match his obese appearance.

Leon Brittan

• Declarative Finger: Often used this when speaking.
• Dunce Cap: Is forced to wear one as part of a minor Humiliation Conga in the House.
• Fat Comic Relief: His size is often Played for Laughs, and he's often seen eating messily when he appears in the backgrounds of scenes.

Geoffrey Howe

• The Bore: is claimed to be this by Norman Tebbit when Thatcher is looking for a successor.
• The Owl-Knowing One: HAROLD ANGRYPERSON points out in CRIMINAL LIBEL^*THE SHOW THAT BRINGS YOU THE TRUTH! that he could be a potential candidate to replace Thatcher as Tory party leader because he looks like a wise owl.

Michael Heseltine

• The Bus Came Back: Heseltine's sudden re-emergence in John Major's cabinet led to his puppet returning, with dyed grey hair, a new voice actor and a shift in personality.
• Butt-Monkey: Later on in the series, he frequently tried, and failed, to become Prime Minister.
• Put on a Bus: After his failed attempt to become leader of the Conservative Party after Thatcher resigned, he disappeared for a while.
• Same Character, But Different: In Thatcher's cabinet he was a paranoid nut, and even after resigning (and trying to run to become leader of the Conservative party) he stayed erratic. When he returned as part of John Major's cabinet he was a lot more stoic,though still treated badly by the other characters
• The Starscream: By the end of Thatcher's tenure. Not that he ever got to be Prime Minister, even after he helped force her out.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: He ended up being the hero of the episode 'The Man with No Title', revealing that Margaret Thatcher had been replaced by a spy working for the USSR. (Though he needed help from a randomly-appearing Clint Eastwood, since the fake Thatcher was also a killer robot)

Norman Tebbit

• The Dragon: He serves as Margaret Thatcher's enforcer, usually inflicting violence on the rest of her Cabinet.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He interchanged between serving as Thatcher's vicious enforcer or actually joining in on her cabinet's childish antics and teasing.

Cecil Parkinson

• The Casanova: Regularly seen engaging with a woman.

Norman Fowler

Kenneth Younger

Kenneth Baker

• Anthropomorphic Animal Adaptation: His sliminess was caricatured in later seasons, eventually changing him into a real-life snail, full of ooze.
• Vocal Dissonance: He was given an exaggeratively oily, nasally voice to match his puppet's (literally) slimy persona.

Douglas Hurd

• Only Sane Man: As far as the Thatcher cabinet had a voice of reason, it would be him.
• Vocal Dissonance: Had a voice that made him sound more like a whiny, stupid doll than his Real Life counterpart.

Edwina Currie

Jeffrey Archer

• Third-Person Person: Downplayed. Not all the time, but he often ends sentences with ‘said the [adjective] writer/politician’ along with some detail of his personal life, as if he was one of his characters.

Tom King

• Invisibility: Portrayed as the invisible man, in reference to his position as Employment Secretary during a time of high unemployment. According to Brittan, he went invisible “at the same time as Kate Bush”.

Neil Channon

John Major

• The Bore: John Major was often portrayed as very dull. At one point Thatcher attempted to regain the cabinet by replacing his brain with a transmitter. Besides being a Thatcher loyalist, his personality wasn't any more robotic than it was before.
• Meet the New Boss: Downplayed. He was nowhere near as malicious or abusive as Thatcher, but was depicted as an equally incompetent Pointy-Haired Boss who exploited his supporters being even worse.
• So Unfunny, It's Funny: A man depicted as so uncharismatic that even his skin is a dull grey.

Virginia Bottomley

Ted Heath

Harold Macmillan

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

• Catchphrase: "I'm Prime Minister of Great Britain, you know."

Boris Johnson

Dominic Cummings

Michael Gove

Dominic Raab

• Broken Masquerade: Successfully figured out Dominic Cummings is an alien.

Matt Hancock

Priti Patel

Rishi Sunak

Relatives

Denis Thatcher

• The Alcoholic: Rarely seen without a drink in his hand.
• Henpecked Husband: He's generally being harangued by Margaret for one reason or another whenever the two of them are onscreen together.

Mark Thatcher

• Gold Digger: On his wedding day, Margaret says that she feels like he's met the right girl for him since his future wife is absolutely loaded.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Harold Angryperson rejects the theory that Mark is Boy George's lovechild since he and Denis are both "such a pair of spanking wallys" that they must be related to each other.

Norma Major

• Your Head A-Splode: Her head explodes in one of the pea dinner sketches.

Arabella Heseltine and Nigella Lawson

• Generation Xerox: Depicted by their dads' respective puppets in women's clothing.

The Labour Party

Neil Kinnock

Roy Hattersley

• Phrasecatcher: "Oh you silly man" whenever Neil came up/did something stupid.
• Spitty Speaker: He spits gallons of saliva whenever he talks. The show's creators said that he "really brought the spitting to Spitting Image".
• Vocal Dissonance: His voice became more watery to match his always spitting puppet.

Denis Healey

• Big Ol' Eyebrows: His most distinctive feature.

John Smith

Jim Callaghan

Harold Wilson

• Hero of Another Story: Arguably the protagonist of the Exchequers sketches.

Michael Foot

Good morrow, Comrades!

• The Bore: Tends to bring the mood down in any Labour party meetings with his long, meandering anecdotes about past socialist victories where he often struggles to find the exact phrase he's looking for.
• Butt-Monkey: Often fulfils this role amongst the other Labour party members.
• Gag Lips: Has his face stuck in a massive permanent frown, despite often being rather chipper in contrast to the sitting Labour MPs.
• Messy Hair: As can be seen from his character image.

Tony Benn

• Strawman News Media: Runs News at Benn, a very obviously pro-Labour news program.

Ken Livingstone

Len Murray

Derek Hatton

Relatives

Glenys Kinnock

Keir Starmer

The SDP Liberal Alliance

David Owen

• Big Guy, Little Guy: The Big Guy to David Steel's Little Guy.
• Commuting on a Bus: Appeared much less frequently when Chris Barrie (his voice actor) left to become Rimmer on Red Dwarf.
• Dancing Royalty: In the Commons of House sketch, he's a really nifty dancer (portrayed by a real person wearing a David Owen mask).
• Early-Installment Weirdness: His hair was originally looser and more flowing before becoming fixed in later episodes.
• No One Should Survive That!: One sketch where David Steel was threatened with being melted down due to lack of relevancy has David Owen get thrown into the melter. As you probably guessed, he appeared absolutely fine in the next episode.
• Put on a Bus: Eventually stopped appearing when the SDP merged with the Liberals, since he wanted nothing to do with it and his new SDP failed to get any seats in the next election.
• Reality Warper: Downplayed, but sometimes you can see him being on both benches of the House of Commons in the same sketch.
• You All Look Familiar: Occasionally David would be placed in a role that would make no sense if he was playing himself (for example, being Hestletine's butler in the Blonde Man sketches).

David Steel

• Big Guy, Little Guy: The Little Guy to David Owen's Big Guy.
• Vocal Dissonance: His puppet sounded more like the real politician in the earlier seasons. Though later, to match the small scale of the puppet, his voice became squeakier.

Roy Jenkins

• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: This was also the case for his Real Life equivalent.

Shirley Williams

The Liberal Party

Cyril Smith

Scottish National Party

Nicola Sturgeon

Alba Party

Alex Salmond

Monster Raving Loony Party

Screaming Lord Sutch

The Republican Party (United States)

Ronald Reagan

• Beware the Silly Ones: He's portrayed as quite dim and childish in the show, but he's also obsessed with nukes and could blow up the world anytime. There are even some moments where he's implied to be controlling Margaret Thatcher.
• Catchphrase: "Those turkeys"
• Cloudcuckoolander: Thanks to his senility.
• Cranium Compartment: He is able to store things in his head such as ice cream.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: One sketch had him not dressing up for Halloween, because "I'm a senile old guy with his finger on the button. I couldn't think of anything scarier."
• Scatterbrained Senior: He's an old man who obviously doesn't have all his marbles. Even he admits he's senile.

Ed Meese

• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Spends his time trying to prevent Reagan from causing a crisis.

Caspar Weinberger

Don

Larry

George H.W. Bush

Dan Quayle

• Too Dumb to Live: He blindly follows orders from Bush, often to his own detriment.

Richard Nixon

Henry Kissinger

Donald Trump

Mitch Mc Connell

Relatives

Nancy Reagan

• Happily Married: She occasionally gets irritated with Ronnie, but on the whole the two of them are pretty happy together.

Jared Kushner

The Democratic Party (United States)

Joe Biden

Kamala Harris

Nancy Pelosi

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Communist Party (Soviet Union)

Yuri Andropov

Konstantin Chernenko

Mikhail Gorbachev

Party Members

• You All Look Familiar: All the non-leader party members in the USSR purposefully look like Leonid Breznev. All of them.
• Adapted Out: In the reboot, Russian characters don't all look like Breznhev anymore.

Communist Party (China)

Xi Jinping

United Russia

Vladimir Putin

Servant of the People

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

• Canon Foreigner: Only appears in the Musical.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: "Makes Tory Prime Ministers look competent since 2022".

Parti Socialiste (France)

François Mitterrand

La République En Marche! (France)

Emmanuel Macron

Christian Democratic Union (Germany)

Angela Merkel

ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe)

Robert Mugabe

The National Party (South Africa)

P.W. Botha

• Amoral Afrikaner: Botha is the deeply controversial and incredibly racist leader of South Africa.
• Blatant Lies: His promises to reform South Africa's apartheid policies. A skit immediately preceding "I've Never Met a Nice South African" calls bullshit on this by juxtaposing it with utter nonsense:
  Botha: My fellow South Africans, I feel it is time for me to tell you the facts as they really are. 1: Bananas are marsupials. 2: Cars run on gravy. 3: Salmon live in trees and eat pencils. 4: Reform in South Africa is on the way!
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Being an enthusiastic supporter of Apartheid, he obviously doesn't think too highly of black people. He even goes so far as to use a black man as a doormat.

The Nazi Party (Germany)

Adolf Hitler, alias Herr Von Wilcox

• Adolf Hitlarious: He somehow survived the war and is now Margaret Thatcher's personal neighbour and political adviser. And he likes to get rid of the pests in his garden by gassing them.

Police Officers

Kenneth Newman

PC Dimbleby

James Anderton

The Royal Family

Queen Elizabeth II

Prince Philip

Prince Charles / King Charles III

• Expressive Ears: His ears were able to wiggle.
• The Un-Favorite: In one episode Prince Andrew gives him a revolver and tells him to "do the decent thing" and even his mum can't get his name right.
• Adaptational Job Change: Although the first season of the revival was made during the last years of Elizabeth's reign, the Musical was produced after the real-life Charles' accession to the throne.

Diana, Princess of Wales

Prince William

• Enfant Terrible: His original series self behaves like an evil boss, keeping piranhas and being cruel to Edward and Charles. He even plots to murder (or at the very least send away) Harry when he is born.

Prince Harry

• Strong Family Resemblance: Prince Harry's puppet had Prince Charles' large ears. So, in sharp contrast to reality he actually looked more like him than the real life Harry does!
• King Incognito: In the revival, when he's trying to adjust to life as a commoner in Los Angeles.

Meghan Markle

Princess Anne

Mark Phillips

Prince Andrew

• False Friend: To his older brother.
  Prince Charles: "Help me, Randy, don't just stab me in the back."
• In-Series Nickname: Occasionally referred to as "Randy" by his family members.

Sarah Ferguson

Prince Edward

• Book Dumb: He tries to address his education seriously, but thinks 3 A-levels plus another equals 5, and can’t spell thesis.

The Queen Mother

• Knuckle Tattoos: One publicity photo of the Queen Mum had her featuring "gin and tonic" on her knuckles.
• Vocal Dissonance: The Queen Mum sounded like actress Beryl Reid. This is because by that point the real Queen Mum rarely gave a public speech and her actual voice was a mystery to the general public.

Princess Margaret

• The Alcoholic: To the point when the family are brainstorming potential baby names for Harry, Margaret's suggestions are all brands of alcoholic drinks.

Princess Michael

Queen Victoria

Newsreaders and Weather Forecasters

News at Ten

Sir Alastair Burnet

• Your Nose A Splode: Happens during one of his broadcasts.

Sandy Gall

Trevor McDonald

Good Morning Britain

David Frost

Weekend World

Brian Walden

BBC News

John Cole

David Dimbleby

Peter Snow

Ian MacAskill

Breakfast Time

Frank Bough

• Nice Guy: Is described as possibly being the only bloke nicer than God.

Selina Scott

• Obfuscating Stupidity: By her own admission, always looks like she's miles away during Breakfast Time because she's contemplating the scientific mysteries of the universe.
• Vanity Project: Scott Free, which according to the continuity announcer isn't very good but they had to let her do it or else she would have wanted a raise to continue doing Breakfast Time.

Newsnight

Sir Robin Day

Newsround

John Craven

Channel Four News

Peter Sissons

CRIMINAL LIBEL^*THE SHOW THAT BRINGS YOU THE TRUTH!

HAROLD ANGRYPERSON

• Conspiracy Theorist: He presents Criminal Libel, where he fills the audience in on all the secrets that the government is supposedly keeping from the public.
• Hidden Depths: Despite his distrust for the establishment in general, he's a big fan of Princess Di and the Queen Mother.
• Momma's Boy: His mum helps out on the show. He makes sure to speak extra loudly for her since she's hard of hearing.
• No Indoor Voice: He speaks only in ALLCAPS YELLING!
• Not a Mask: When he interviews Thatcher in person about her most likely successor, it's revealed that he isn't obscuring his face in a shadow - that's just how he looks.
• Not Good with Rejection: In Spitting Image S 1 E 10, he opens his show by complaining that a girl he met didn't sleep with him because she didn't believe he was a television presenter.

Media Figures

Robert Maxwell

Rupert Murdoch

• Gasshole: Most of his sentences end with a belch or a fart.

Eddie Shah

Michael Grade

Alasdair Milne

TV Personalities

Melvyn Bragg

Terry Wogan

Esther Rantzen

• British Teeth: Most of her face is taken up by her teeth.

Desmond Wilcox

Anne Robinson

Denis Norden

If you're one of those people...

• The Bore: He’s so boring and lame that his audience are paid to laugh at his jokes.

Joan Rivers

• Skull for a Head: Depicted as a living skeleton.

Janet Street-Porter

Paul Daniels

Debbie McGee

• Look-Alike Lovers: She's Paul Daniels, but with a different wig.

Jimmy "Tarby" Tarbuck

Bernard Manning

Olivia Colman

James Corden

Religious Figures

God

Satan

Death

Pope John Paul II

• Cool Old Guy: He's a real rockstar pope.
• Jive Turkey: He has a wheezy, priestly voice that he occasionally uses, but most of the time he talks like a 1950s hepcat.

Robert Runcie

Terry Waite

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Justified, as his Real Life counterpart was kidnapped in 1987. He had previously been seen on the show returning from negotiations abroad with lots of duty-free shopping for the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie.

Ian Paisley

• Reasoning with God: Inverted when he badgers God in order to get him to curse Gerry Adams with boils and locusts etc., while God tries to talk him out of it. In a later sketch, he decides to take his custom elsewhere after being upstaged by Leon Brittan during the Westland Affair and being denied his plague of boils.

Actors

Sir John Gielgud

Sir Laurence Olivier

Sir Alec Guiness

Donald Sinden

Michael Caine

Joan Collins

Anthony

Orson Welles

Meryl Streep

Felicity Kendal

Leonard Nimoy

Academics, Writers and Intellectuals

John Mortimer

Bernard Levin

• Book Worm: He takes it to a Cargo Ship level.

Jonathan Miller

Alan Bennett

• Creator Provincialism: Richard Attenborough tries to coax him into writing a script for his latest epic, but he can only come up with a story about an elderly lady in Huddersfield waiting on a visit from the local curate.

Arthur Burke Sagan

• Composite Character: His name suggests he's intended to be viewed as a combination of Arthur C Clarke and Carl Sagan

Singers, Musicians and Composers

Aled Jones

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Julian Lloyd Webber

Sarah Brightman

Madonna

• Anatomy Anomaly: Is one of several puppets depicted with human-length legs.
• Belly Mouth: Once depicted as having a singing belly button.

Kylie Minogue

Mick Jagger

Keith Richards

• Addled Addict: He was depicted as being such a heavy drug user that the other rock stars already assumed he was dead, despite him being alive in front of their own eyes.

Luciano Pavarotti

• Big Eater: He performs an entire operatic number about the ludicrous amount of food he eats.

Cliff Richard

Rod Stewart

Prince

Jools Holland

David Bowie

Cyndi Lauper

Bette Midler

George Michael

Andrew Ridgeley

Ringo Starr

Athletes, Sportspeople and Sports Journalists

David Coleman

• Your Head A-Splode: One occasion his head explodes as a result of his hyperactive commentating.

Lester Piggott

Steve Davis

• The Bore: So much so that he tries to relaunch his image as Steve Interesting Davis.

Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean

Richie Benaud

Mike Gatting

• Vocal Dissonance: Is depicted as having a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

Generic Puppets

Lord Lucan

• The Cameo: Generally appeared randomly in sketches in non-speaking roles, in reference to his disappearence. His biggest role was being the bartender the main singer of 'I've Never Met A Nice South African' was singing to
• Hidden in Plain Sight: In one episode during a conference, a police officer asks him where he’s hidden, despite the fact he’s right in front of him. Lucan says that he’s not telling, to which the police come to the conclusion that he’s in South Africa.

Pigs

Vultures

Sheep

Others

Mary Whitehouse

• Celebrity Endorsement: In-Universe, she endorses Clean as a Whistle, an album of Bowdlerised rugby songs.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She might be a humourless killjoy intent on compelling others to adhere to her own moral standards, but even she doesn't like P.W. Botha.
• Never Mess with Granny: Downplayed. In Spitting Image S 1 E 9, it's revealed that she's a wrestling fan. She eagerly encourages one of the lady mud-wrestlers on her telly to "go for the eyes."

Arthur Scargill

• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Once argues with Ian Mac Gregor over who invented the Davy lamp. As a miner you’d think he’d know the answer - but no, he thinks it’s Davy Jones.

David Attenborough

• Liar Revealed: One sketch reveals that he’s been lying about the animals he makes documentaries about to make them more exciting.

Clive James

• Sophisticated as Hell: As poet laureate, he can reference farts and Proust all in the same verse.

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