Iconic ITV puppet sketch present Spitting Picture by no means pulled any punches when it got here to their portrayals of well-known faces and nobody was immune from their lampooning, not even Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The collection first ran from 1984 till 1993 and unsurprisingly their topics weren’t all the time amused. The late Queen took such umbrage at one portrayal she consulted her attorneys. Nevertheless, she wasn’t upset together with her personal likeness which regularly featured her carrying a scarf and CND badge. Relatively she was upset on behalf of her son Prince Andrew. “This time they’ve gone too far,” she reportedly fumed over a grotesque characterisation of her second born son.
Like all the opposite puppets it was created by Peter Fluck and Roger Regulation, who have been the staff behind the TV present and all its spin-offs. They portrayed the then single Andrew as a unadorned centrefold utilizing two kilos of Cumberland sausage as a prop whereas he sported an enormous grin. “I believe it was the one time the Queen or any member of the Royal Household complained about the best way we parodied them,” Roger Regulation recalled in 2014.
“It was earlier than Andrew married Sarah Ferguson in 1986 and we depicted him as a man-about-town. It was a double-page unfold within the Spitting Picture annual fairly than one thing that appeared on TV.
“The Queen wished recommendation on whether or not what we had performed to Andrew was obscene. We let or not it’s recognized if it went to courtroom we’d flip up with the puppet and sausages and let a decide and jury resolve. We by no means heard any extra,” he instructed MailOnline.
This wasn’t to be the final time the Queen rocked the boat for the satirical comedy present, though the following incident could be way more tragic. In March 2023 ITV revealed it was pressured to write down off episodes of the collection, which had relaunched in 2020, that includes the Queen following the monarch’s demise.
It value £9 million to scrap the episodes however they stated they “couldn’t be successfully edited” following the information, and it was “extremely unlikely” they might ever be screened.
The figures got here to gentle in ITV plc’s 2022 value breakdown and full yr outcomes report for the interval ending December 31, 2022. It revealed that following the Queen’s demise, on September 8, 2022, the corporate had incurred “vital extra prices” referring to its protection.
“Following the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, the M&E enterprise incurred vital extra prices associated to information protection over and above regular day‑to‑day prices.
“The enterprise has additionally written off the remaining Spitting Picture episodes that includes the Queen, as they might not be successfully edited and so it’s extremely unlikely they’ll ever be screened. In whole the enterprise has incurred £16 million of prices in relation to this which is taken into account distinctive,” the report acknowledged.
The report additionally confirmed the price of writing off the Spitting Picture episodes that includes the late monarch had been £9 million.
