Matt Forde on the upcoming new series of Spitting Image

Virgin Radio

7 Sep 2021, 09:58

The comedian, impressionist and writer joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about the brand new series of the satirical puppet-based sketch show, his residency in London’s West End, and missing Donald Trump.

Spitting Image series two will be available to stream exclusively on BritBox from this Saturday 11th September. As well as writing for the show, Matt provides many of the voices. He told Chris: “I do Boris Johnson, Phil Foden, Alex Salmond, Keir Starmer, Donald Trump. I had to do Chris Witty this week, and I’ve never done him before. I think whoever was doing him must have had a cold or something, so they said, ‘Can you do Chris Witty tomorrow?’ So I just had to watch loads of videos of Chris Witty. It’s one of those things though, he’s been on telly for a year, I wouldn’t have a clue what he actually sounded like! So I just had to knock one up, so hopefully no-one goes, ‘That sounds nothing like Chris Witty!’”

Fresh episodes of the show will land on BritBox every Saturday for the next nine weeks. New puppets in this series include Sajid Javid, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Tom Cruise, Tom Daley, Jess Phillips, and Raheem Sterling, along with existing favourites such as Joe Biden, Cristiano Ronaldo, Prince Andrew, Harry Kane, Vladimir Putin, Harry and Meghan, and Dominic Cummings.

Scripts are written and new puppets are created as close to each episode as possible. Matt told Chris, however, that one character will likely be far less prominent than in the previous series. “There’s not much Trump in there, which is a shame,” he explained.

Bursting into a Boris Johnson impression, Matt said: “Let me be absolutely clear, Chris, that it is good news for the planet, but it is terrible news for the career of Matt Forde!”

Spitting Image’s one-off US Election Special this year gained ITV’s highest Saturday night ratings at that time in four years, with 4.4 million people tuning in, and Matt told Chris that there is still an appetite for Trump. “I did a gig last night, and people were there just to hear the Trump impression. I did an hour of new stuff, and I had to do it! I had to give the mob what they wanted!”

Talking more about the former President, Matt said: “What I miss about him the most, is when he tried to be nice. That was when he was at his most interesting. When he was being horrible, that was his natural state, but you know that thing that really good politicians are really good at, when they go to places and they pay tribute to a country? So if Tony Blair went to France, he’d say, ‘It’s great to be back in France, which is a place with a tremendous shared identity, but also you compare Marseille to Paris, and the different cultures there, it’s a very special place, very close to my heart.’ If you were in France, you’d go, ‘Oh my god, this is amazing. This guy gets us.’ 

“When Trump would do stuff like that, it would be like a copy of it, but he didn’t have any of the detail. He’d say, ‘It’s great to be here in France, which is a very beautiful country, I know there are many good people, many good people in France, and we like to talk about the good people because they do a lot of good stuff and, obviously in France you do have some bad people, but we don’t want to talk about them today. Today is not about bad people, who do have to be dealt with, by the way, we do need to find a way, in every country, to deal with those bad dudes. But France is a beautiful place. It’s a country, and I believe it’s still in Europe and it has many neighbours. I know Germany is part of France, and that’s a very nice bit, but you get some bad people there…’ It would just be this rambling, detailess desert! Trying to be nice, genuinely wanting to say something nice about France, but had never been bothered to find out what France is!”

When speaking about how Trump plays a much smaller part in the new series of Spitting Image, Matt said: “It’s almost like my character got written out of Coronation Street, isn’t it? When he lost the election, I was like, ‘Oh.’ But that’s fine. The show must go on.”

Matt has hosted his own weekly podcast, The Political Party, for over seven years, and he told Chris some exciting news about it. “My show, The Political Party, is permanently moving to the Duchess Theatre,” he said. “It means that I’m basically like Aguilera, or Celine Dion, where I’ll basically always exist in the West End of London every fortnight.

“The opening night, my guest is the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham. What a night out that will be.”

The Political Party is not the only podcast the 38-year-old does though, as he explained. “I do another podcast with Jon Richardson called Comedians playing FPL. We’ve just started it this week. I do another one called British Scandal, with Alice Levine, which is very good. I’ve just launched this Comedians Playing FPL, the fantasy Premier League game. I’m terrible at it!”

Spitting Image will be available to stream from Saturday 11th September exclusively on Britbox. Tickets for The Political Party are available via mattforde.com.

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.