JUST when Gordon Brown thought things could not get any tougher in his ambition to become prime minister, an unexpected new hurdle appeared yesterday - the return of Spitting Image.
The show, the scourge of politicians, royalty and vain celebrities everywhere, has been revamped and its writers are warning that its scripts will be more vicious than before.
Last night critics said they doubted the new version of Spitting Image, with the latex puppets of the past replaced by balloon-like cartoon caricatures, would engage viewers like the original.
Paul Whitelaw, The Scotsman's television critic, said: "This looks like Spitting Image with all the grotesquerie removed, which rather misses the point.
"Much of the humour in the original series came from the cruelly yet astutely exaggerated look of the puppets, and the skill with which they were brought to life. But these look like the kind of rubbishy animated virals you'd find on YouTube."
ITV1 has commissioned Harry Naylor, one of the writers behind the first series of Spitting Image - which was created by Peter Fluck and Roger Law and aired between 1984 and 1996 - to update the satirical series.
The programmes gave comics who went on to become household names, such as Rory Bremner, Harry Enfield and Alistair McGowan, their first taste of public exposure.
A show insider said: "The series will be rude and irreverent and just about everybody will be in the firing line.
"There will be lots of sketches, but also stories we come back to. We are planning some stuff on Tony Blair's new life."
Like the old Spitting Image programmes, production will be left to the last minute to ensure gags are highly topical.
ITV1 is planning eight 30-minute programmes which will start next January.
Graham Lovelace, a media analyst, said the return of Spitting Image would be good for politics, and might even reconnect a generation with the political process.
He said: "Spitting Image in the Eighties was essential viewing and rapidly won cult status. Not only that, but it was required viewing for politicians who, even if they didn't like being sent up by it, recognised it was an important part of the political debate of the times.
"I suspect many of them even enjoyed seeing themselves in caricature."
Mr Lovelace said Spitting Image had translated the tradition of lampooning political and public figures in satirical newspaper cartoons. "By recreating this great tradition, Spitting Image enabled people at home to recognise politicians and, in turn, transformed some MPs into superstars."
Mr Lovelace said MPs' first reaction to the news that Spitting Image is to return would be: "Oh no." But he added: "There are positives here - most especially for Gordon Brown - in that this new version of the programme could reconnect a generation that has given up on politics."
Saurabh Kakkar, executive producer, told the TV industry magazine Broadcast: "The technology now is of such high quality that we are not restricted - we can go anywhere and tackle most people and subjects."
HOW IT ALL BEGAN FOR THE PUPPET MASTERS
PETER Fluck and Roger Law met at art school in Cambridge, where they encountered the young Peter Coo. Law went on to hone his satirical skills by producing cartoons for Cook's Private Eye magazine.
In the mid-1970s, the pair began producing puppet caricatures for publications such as Time, the Sunday Times and Germany's Stern magazine, which eventually led to the creation of Spitting Image.
The burgeoning culture of satire in the 1960s had succeeded in undermining Britain's traditional deference for the political classes, which allowed the 1980s variant to be much more vicious.
Fluck and Law took no prisoners. They cruelly lampooned politicians of all parties but reserved special venom for Margaret Thatcher - who was once portrayed as Hannibal Lecter - and her ministers. The most memorable puppet spoofs were of a jackboot-wearing Norman Tebbit, a bumbling Geoffrey Howe and a wild, gung-ho Michael Heseltine. Legend has it one proposed puppet, the "Leon Brittan turd", was vetoed by producers as too offensive.
Still more remarkable was the show's targeting of the Royal Family, previously victim to only the gentlest satire. Charles was shown as a blundering crackpot, Diana a vain airhead and the Queen Mother a heavy drinker obsessed with horse racing.
One of the generic puppets used as an extra in many scenes was a Lord Lucan look-alike. He would often appear as a waiter, barman or just in the background of many sketches in foreign settings.
Spitting Image's impact on its main targets was negligible, although David Steel, the then Liberal leader, rued the damage caused by his depiction as a squeaky-voiced midget, literally in the pocket of David Owen, his SDP counterpart.
Perhaps the ultimate insult to the show's political intent was that, after it folded, many of the victims, including Michael Heseltine, offered to buy their puppets.
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