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Spitting Image stages revival – and this time the puppets are on a mission

Live theatre version of 1980s TV satire features Tom Cruise and other showbiz stars trying to save ‘broken Britain’

Writing a political satire for the stage in today’s tumultuous times is no easy task, as the writers of the new Spitting Image Live were quick to find out.

They had originally planned to base the show around Boris Johnson, but ended up binning the whole script the day after he left Downing Street .

“I think we were probably, apart from him, the last people left in the country who wanted him to stay,” said the comedian Al Murray , who has co-written the show alongside the impressionist Matt Forde and the show’s director, Sean Foley. “But it’s meant that we arrived on the thing we’ve got, which is Tom Cruise in the centre of the show, rather than a politician. It’s as much about showbiz as politics.”

Their new stage production, Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves the World, is the show’s first foray into the world of theatre and features more than 100 of the famous caricature puppets people have seen on their TV screens over the years.

“I think theatre is the best place to experience Spitting Image,” said Forde. “I’m amazed it was never done before, this is the natural home for it. To have something that’s so visually striking – it’s bizarre that no one at any point in its history said: people should be able to come and see these things.”

As he talks between show rehearsals, he is watched by the array of life-size puppets – “the greatest cast ever assembled”, as Foley describes them.

There’s an angry, lifejacket-clad Greta Thunberg, a terrifying, rabid Paddington Bear, Jacob Rees-Mogg in the style of a praying mantis, and Matt Hancock in his I’m a Celebrity getup.

While the classic characters are there – Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, King Charles and Prince Andrew – some unexpected faces are also in the line-up – Alison Hammond, Ed Sheeran and Stormzy all feature.

“Because of the talent of the artists and the puppeteers, the way they’re manoeuvred, you really do feel like it’s those people,” said Forde. “It sounds like the maddest thing but you really do feel like you’ve just watched Tom Cruise, Boris Johnson, and Stormzy all in a scene together, it’s mind-blowing.”

The show is premiering at the Birmingham Rep at the start of February, in the city where the show was first filmed 40 years ago.

Spitting Image was one of the most-watched TV programmes of the 1980s before it was cancelled in 1996 due to declining viewing figures. It was rebooted in 2020 for the streaming service BritBox only to be cancelled after two series.

Under the watchful eye of the caricaturist Roger Law, who co-created the original show and has signed off on the script and puppets in the new stage version, the team are hoping theatre will breathe new life into the format. “There’s a mega appetite for satire. I don’t think there’s ever been a stronger appetite,” said Forde.

“Since 2014 politics has been explosive, and I think people have really wondered why there hasn’t been more satire on telly. I think Spitting Image being put on BritBox, when it should have just been on the mainstream channels, was a mistake.”

The stage show, like the TV version, is based on a series of sketches, but there is an overarching plot – Tom Cruise assembling a team to take on the bandits who are ruining “broken Britain”. “We’re in a golden age of the Marvel movie, people are used to seeing heroic quest stories played out with big film stars in, so that’s what we’ve done,” said Murray.

While the stage show has given the team more freedom to be bolder, there have also been logistical challenges, such as the puppeteers suffering from “dead arms” after holding their characters for too long. But the show doesn’t go to pains to hide the effort that goes in to bringing the characters alive.

“When we first started messing around with the whole idea of putting it on stage, we quite quickly decided we’re not going to go down the route of trying to hide people behind desks the whole time,” said Foley.

“You declare it as part of the theatricality and I think that’s what’s been added to the Spitting Image brand here – it’s all about the theatricality.”

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Weak script is saved by impressive puppetry

Back in the heyday of the puppet-peopled TV show, no one was safe from the bite of Spitting Image’s mordant satire. But after a tepid revival on BritBox, the march of the puppets on to the stage is a faltering one. It’s impressive to see 106 beautifully crafted puppets over the course of two hours , especially when manipulated by just 12 performers. But the jokes, written by Matt Forde, Al Murray and Sean Foley , consist mainly of a politician or celebrity saying the most obvious thing.

A smug trigger warning at the beginning of Foley’s production tells us that the show “identifies as funny”. It’s a languid little gag that presages plenty more anaemic satire along the same lines: Keir Starmer is boring, Nicola Sturgeon quotes Braveheart, Greta Thunberg is concerned about the climate.

There is a plot, though the show is aware of its unimportance – it serves more as a vehicle for bringing in an unceasing parade of puppets. King Charles is trying to restore the literal fabric of society – a pair of skid-marked underpants from M&S – and calls on Tom Cruise to put together a group of superheroes. They include Idris Elba and Angela Rayner. Putin’s here, Xi too, even Hitler, rubbing shoulders with Elon Musk, Taylor Swift and, obviously, Harry and Meghan.

It’s a strange mix of incredibly topical – Nicola Sturgeon’s lines swiftly rewritten in the wake of her resignation – and weirdly dated. Are we really still expected to laugh at jokes about John Major and Edwina Currie? But the writers are all men of a certain age, so perhaps it’s no surprise to hear ageing jokes. Part of the trouble is that the dialogue is pre-recorded, so there is no sense of timing. If the audience laughs too long, it’s impossible to hear the next line.

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To be fair, in its more demented moments it seems to have something to say: Paddington Bear is a ragged Peruvian drug-dealer, eyes practically falling off his head, while Suella Braverman is possessed in the manner of Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist, orgasming at the idea of repelling migrant boats.

And towards the end there’s a stretch when the show comes alive: Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson sing the Edith Piaf standard Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien in front of pictures and headlines from the past catastrophic few years. Then Margaret Thatcher is dragged out of hell, in a nod both to Spitting Image’s most famous sketch (“What about the vegetables?”) and a warped scene from the classical Greek comedy The Frogs, as Thatcher casts judgement on her fawning, failing successors. In fact, the spirit of Aristophanes is alive throughout, as giant dancing penises and talking nipples (Carrie Johnson’s, if you’re interested) flood the stage.

It’s not always great satire, but at times it is great fun. The best thing is the puppets, which, despite their fixed expressions, seem to take on all countenances as their grey-suited manipulators dance them around the stage.

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Behind-the-scenes at Spitting Image stage show including cost of puppets and creation

Sanjeeta Bains went behind the scenes at Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves the World at the Birmingham Rep theatre to speak to director and co-writer Sean Foley about the satirical puppets

• 22:58, 8 Feb 2023
• Updated 22:11, 16 Feb 2023

Donald Trump 's bald head lies on the make-up table – his wig is away for maintenance – and a member of the wardrobe team hurries past carrying Boris Johnson .

This bizarre scene is being played out backstage at the Birmingham Rep theatre, where I’m also spending time with Tom Cruise , Harry Styles , Angela Rayner , Vladimir Putin and Nicola Sturgeon . And hanging out in the wings is a ­terrifying version of Paddington Bear.

Spitting Image was unmissable TV during its first run between 1984 and 1996, ruthlessly skewering politicians and celebrities with savage topical jokes.

Today’s satirical shows have to react even faster as, thanks to rolling news, jokes become dated at lightning speed.

And it must be even worse for this stage show, Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves the World. The voices are pre-recorded, but there are gaps in the script where a few timely gags can be quickly recorded and added in.

Appearances have to be updated too. A few days ago, there was a mini crisis when Labour MP Jess Phillips dyed her hair a lighter shade of brown.

The show's director and co-writer Sean Foley says: "Working on the show has been incredible but it’s never-ending. Partly because the production needs to be topical and partly because public life in the UK in the last six months has been so chaotic – to have three prime ministers in such a short space of time."

With puppets costing £10,000 each, Liz Truss proved a pricey mistake for the show as well as for the country.

Sean says of creating the puppet versions of celebrities: "We commission a caricaturist to draw them and then when you’ve got that right, it is sent to the clay modeller.

"They come up with a head based on the drawing, then someone else does a reverse cast of it, then a cast is done in rubber latex. The glass eyes are made bespoke and, finally, the puppet is painted and wigged. That process takes a month for one puppet. And then the voice artists do their work."

Sean, who was behind the smash hit The Play What I Wrote, about Morecambe & Wise, has written the show alongside comedian Al Murray and impressionist Matt Forde.

As he gives me a tour of the 108 puppets hanging in rows ahead of preview rehearsals, only a handful need a second glance to recognise.

Two years in the making, this stage production was originally called The Liar King and based on Boris Johnson.

When he was forced to leave Downing Street, the team had to start again.

Hollywood A-lister Tom Cruise was instead picked as the central character.

Sean says: "Boris is still in the show, but he is no longer the star. It’s the first time we’ve had a Tom Cruise Spitting Image puppet. He’s a terrific actor, but he sometimes does this thing where he is needlessly intense.

"We start with a big scene with all the Royal Family because that’s the biggest soap opera in the UK."

The new storyline is inspired by 1960 western The Magnificent Seven.

Sean explains: "Tom is employed by King Charles to save his kingdom and so Tom puts together a team. " Famous faces include Elon Musk , Xi Jinping , Vladimir Putin, James Corden .

Do you enjoy reading about celebrities? Sign up for all the best celeb news from the Mirror here .

Original Spitting Image co-creator Roger Law, 81, has been a hands-off influence on the stage project.

"He’s kept a light hand on the tiller throughout," says Sean. "The key word that summed up Spitting Image is anarchic and we have remained true to that. If anything, Roger has wanted us to be more anarchic, more cutting, more outrageous, but always fun."

As well as new puppets, which include climate change ­campaigner Greta Thunberg , there are some old faces too.

The grey John Major is back, one of the original Spitting Image’s most famous creations.

But the joke about Major being dull was upended when it later turned out the former PM had an affair with Edwina Currie – something the new production references.

In the world of Spitting Image, ­politics' new Mr Boring is Keir Starmer . Sean says: "We homed in on the idea that Keir might come across as boring. And how he talks like he is slightly annoyed. That becomes funnier and funnier as the show goes on. A bit Alan Partridge."

He adds, perhaps optimistically: "I do feel if Keir saw it, he would laugh."

Of satirising the Prime Minister, Sean says: " Rishi Sunak has the head boy, school prefect way of talking. Rishi is really desperate to be PM, but everyone else thinks he really shouldn’t be."

I take a few selfies with my favourite stars before a rehearsal performance. Without giving away any spoilers, Tom Cruise makes his entrance in the only way he can. It takes three puppeteers: one for Tom’s head and two for his limbs.

Unlike in the TV series, the puppeteers are on view but as productions such as Avenue Q have proven, they do not detract from the show.

On sending up the entire Royal Family, Sean says: "The only side we take is that everyone is fair game. But if you are going to lampoon someone, you have to do it in a way that is justifiable and accountable."

Spitting Image was rebooted in 2020 for the streaming service BritBox, running for two years, and Sean is hopeful it will make a mainstream TV comeback.

On the importance of the show, he says: "Spitting Image holds people up to comic scorn, people who are telling other people what to do and not observing those same things.

"There has been almost hysteria from audiences who have seen the previews. I think it is a kind of release of people going 'Thank God we’re allowed to laugh at this stuff'.

"We really do need to laugh at it and we need to laugh at them."

Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves The World is now on at Birmingham Rep until March 11.

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Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image the Musical

• Theatre, Comedy
• 3 out of 5 stars
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Time Out says

This stage version of the satirical institution is best at its most caustic

Pity the poor writers of ‘ Spitting  Image’. In the months since this stage adaptation of the resurrected satirical TV puppet show premiered in Birmingham we’ve lost a Cabinet minister (Raab), a former Prime Minister (Johnson) and the leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon, who was then arrested. Gamely, writers Al Murray, Matt Forde and Sean Foley – who doubles as director – feed a few new lines into this West End transfer, which features real-life puppets and pre-recorded voiceovers. But as the news cycle rolls oppressively on, the feeling lingers that this is a show permanently  destined to be a little out of date.

Plot-wise, it’s a week before Charles’s coronation (see what I mean?) and the fabric of society – a pair of skid-smudged M&S pants – is in disrepair. We soon get into a routine of being asked to laugh at jokes which consist of saying the most obvious thing about a particular person. Charles calls in Tom Cruise (tiny, closeted) to repair the pants, and Cruise recruits a crack team including Angela Rayner (Northern), Idris Elba (Bond), Greta Thunberg (woke), Meghan Markle (woke and self-obsessed) as well as Tyson Fury and RuPaul for reasons best left unfathomed. Meanwhile, a cabal of evil-doers led by Boris Johnson, alongside Trump, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg and others, tries to thwart their plans. Oh, and it’s a musical – mostly reworked existing songs. Those obvious jokes are many and tiresome, and seem like an excuse to stuff as many familiar faces onto the stage as possible. And yet there are moments when the satire is really quite thrillingly caustic. It’s hard to forget the image of Suella Braverman, looking like the girl from ‘The Exorcist’, giving herself an orgasm at the thought of stopping migrant boats; or there’s Carrie Johnson with talking nipples, dancing alongside a chorus line of giant penises whose urethras peep open and closed as they sing. Forde, Foley and Murray save their deepest savagery for Sunak and Johnson. A rousing climax sees Thatcher resurrected, and Johnson and Sunak singing ‘Je Ne Regrette Rien’ in front of pictures of people who died during the pandemic, and you wonder why it can’t all be like that, with something to say, and a scathing way of saying it. As a technical feat, wow. There’s deft choreography from Lizzi Gee (those penises!) and sharp video design from Nina Dunn, but really it’s the puppets that make the show, more than 100 of them, beautifully constructed, with 15 puppeteers doing a fantastic job of bringing those famous faces to life and making themselves disappear. Sometimes those puppets get absurd and profane and spittingly angry things to say. More often, like those penises, the satire flops.

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Harry and Meghan make stage debut as gruesome puppets for Spitting Image

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have made their stage debut as gruesome puppets in new theatrical production Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves the World.

Harry and Meghan featured alongside other famous faces including the King, rapper Stormzy and Tom Cruise at the show’s world premiere on Tuesday.

Co-written by comedians Sean Foley, Matt Forde and Al Murray, the production is being staged at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

It sees world famous celebrities thrown together, with Hollywood star Cruise tasked by Charles with saving Great Britain.

Other satirical puppets included on the show’s roster include climate activist Greta Thunberg and Sir Ian McKellen as well as former and current members of the Government.

Some puppets are more exaggerated than others, with ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel depicted as a bat-like creature.

Spitting Image co-creator Roger Law previously announced the show was heading for London’s West End with a production about Boris Johnson tentatively titled The Liar King, although this has not yet come to fruition.

The popular sketch show, featuring puppets of well-known figures, made its return on BritBox in September 2021 following its revival in 2020 for the first time in 24 years.

It originally ran for 18 series between 1984 and 1996 and was watched by 15 million viewers in its prime.

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Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves the World, Live on Stage is presented by Avalon and Birmingham Rep.

'Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical' review – this puppet-based satire mainly preaches to the converted

Read our three-star review of Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical, now in performances at the Phoenix Theatre to 26 August.

Can it really be nearly 40 years since Spitting Image first arrived on British TV, its wickedly satiric sketches (with puppets to match) skewering everything in its wake? I shan’t ever forget the parodic fun they had with Andrew Lloyd Webber , to name just one of a slew of targets that tended as often as not to come from the world of politics: the world of Private Eye made flesh – well, in latex terms, at least.

Now comes Spitting Image The Musical , boasting the add-on title Idiots Assemble as if to cue a response that most playgoers will surely have figured out for themselves.

The question is: what value a theatre evening comprised of the sort of material that these days can be approximated with a single well-aimed social media broadside or meme? Many a Twitter feed brings together an all-too-obvious assemblage of idiots, which puts the likes of director and co-writer Sean Foley’s show at risk of redundancy. His co-writers are Matt Forde and Al Murray, who must be scrambling daily to keep up with the news.

So it is that I spent much of the first act quietly groaning, first at the idea that so venerable a part of this country’s cultural zeitgeist should now require trigger warnings. (How times have changed.) And also that we need to be informed at the start that the show respects nothing – except, one could argue, better behaviour from the public figures who are pilloried during it.

As if to begin from an unimpeachable height out of reach to most of the figures on view, we find Ian McKellen in ripely Shakespearean form leading us into a narrative (if one can call it that) having to do with knitting up a society coming apart at the seams over which an uneasy Charles must now rule. Cue dirty Y-fronts as the visual correlative.

A diminutive Tom Cruise descends from above to help with a mission that really is impossible even if this is one film star, we’re told, who doesn’t do allegory or metaphor. That’s hardly a problem given the blunt instruments of a cut-and-thrust that weds “Circle of Life” from The Lion King to an assortment of royals seen alternately leafing through Asian Babes magazine or partnering Paddington Bear on a bespoke version of “We Will Rock You”.

“The hustle never stops,” Meghan Markle, all glistening teeth, remarks to a onetime prince of a husband who at every turn is seen plugging his memoir, Spare . Cruise, meanwhile, forsakes poetic language to dismiss the UK as “a total shithole”, while Presidents Xi and Putin look on from a side box. There’s a number, “Putin’ on the Blitz”, that you certainly won’t find in Peter Morgan’s Patriots down the road, the other London show just now to afford the Russian leader a voice.

Twelve puppeteers, led by Will Palmer as captain, keep the celebs coming, some of them (Ed Sheeran, Lin-Manuel Miranda) gone from view almost before we have clocked them. Greta Thunberg dashes up the aisle as a late arrival from Sweden (I guess her plane was delayed), and I laughed out loud at a flatulent Rupert Murdoch who is heard pondering when he might die.

The musical component couples standards like “Je Ne Regrette Rien” – a duet for (who else?) BoJo and Rishi Sunak – with an original score by Alexander Bermange. The Met police are lambasted for their racism, and Lizzi Gee’s choreography includes a line-up of dancing penises because – well, it’s that kind of show. (The aforementioned sequence is in fact far less tasteless than a rifle-toting Volodymyr Zelenskyy number that doesn’t land at all.)

At the interval, I really was wondering how much more of this was necessary, especially when the prevailing animus is busy preaching to the converted, as I suspect will be the case for many. Luckily, the second act is livelier and less predictable, even if it’s no surprise to find Margaret Thatcher – the Spitting Image mother ship if ever there was one – saved for the bilious finale.

You have to hand it to all involved for communicating a gathering fury that has presumably only been amplified by the carryings-on in the public sphere (step up, Nicola Sturgeon and Suella Braverman, the latter glimpsed here in evident need of an exorcist). Such misdeeds have only redoubled since the production began this past winter in Birmingham.

The show makes trenchant use of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” – the admonitory Cabaret number that has been provocatively co-opted by Spitting Image before. If this parade of people really does represent the future, we will need the refuge allowed by art more than ever.

Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical is at the Phoenix Theatre through 26 August.

Photo credit: Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical (Photo by Mark Senior)

Originally published on Jun 22, 2023 14:58

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Harry and Meghan make stage debut as puppets for Spitting Image

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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have made their stage debut as gruesome puppets in new theatrical production Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves the World.

Harry and Meghan featured alongside other famous faces including the King, rapper Stormzy and Tom Cruise at the show’s world premiere on Tuesday.

Co-written by comedians Sean Foley, Matt Forde and Al Murray, the production is being staged at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

It sees world famous celebrities thrown together, with Hollywood star Cruise tasked by Charles with saving Great Britain.

Other satirical puppets included on the show’s roster include climate activist Greta Thunberg and Sir Ian McKellen as well as former and current members of the Government.

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Some puppets are more exaggerated than others, with ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel depicted as a bat-like creature.

Spitting Image previously headed to London’s West End in 2022, with a show heavily featuring former prime minister Boris Johnson.

The popular sketch show, featuring puppets of well-known figures, made its return on BritBox in September 2021 following its revival in 2020 for the first time in 24 years.

It originally ran for 18 series between 1984 and 1996 and was watched by 15 million viewers in its prime.

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Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves the World, Live on Stage  is presented by Avalon and Birmingham Rep.

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Spitting Image has the most incredible cast – from Tom Cruise to Stormzy, Rishi to Tay Tay

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‘I can genuinely claim to have the greatest cast ever assembled,’ says director Sean Foley about his latest show – and it’s no idle boast.

For has there ever been a play with an ensemble as high-flying as King Charles , Tom Cruise , Greta Thunberg , Boris Johnson , Taylor Swift and Stormzy , among many others? Such are the stars of the new Spitting Image theatre show – all appearing in puppet form, of course.

Called Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves The World, the production marks the first time ever that the classic TV satire has crossed over to the stage.

Premiering in the mid-1980s, Spitting Image was startling: a gloriously rude and irreverent comedy in which everyone from politicians to film stars were brought down a peg or two via sketches in which they appeared as grotesque rubber caricatures.

The TV series was cancelled in 1996 but subsequently revived on the BritBox streaming service in 2020, where it ran for two seasons – and now that in turn has inspired this theatrical treatment, premiering at 
Birmingham Rep.

This new show brings its myriad characters together in a Marvel-style storyline in which the new King deploys Cruise and a crack team of famous types to save his beleaguered kingdom from shadowy forces; with a cast of more than 100 characters, controlled by 12 puppeteers and voiced by numerous other actors, it’s quite the operation.

‘It’s about as complicated as you could possibly get. I’m sure there are other more complicated things, but I can’t imagine them,’ laughs Sean, who has co-written the show with comics Al Murray and Matt Forde.

Seeing these life-sized puppets in the flesh – so to speak – should be a remarkable experience. ‘You start to believe that these things are alive,’ says Matt, while the team will be able to push boundaries further, or to use Al’s word, be more ‘abrasive’ on stage.

‘What I can do on stage is another ten paces further down the track than what I could do on television, and audiences expect that,’ Al explains.

Have they worried about going too far? ‘No,’ affirms Al, ‘because Roger Law, who’s one of the founders of Spitting Image and involved in this project intimately – he’s an anarchist. So the 
idea that we’d be going, “Ooh, I’m not sure about that,” when we’ve got an anarchist on the team would be a 
bit strange!’

Nevertheless, they’ve had to scrap whole plots along the way, for reasons of topicality rather than taste. When the Spitting Image stage show was first announced last year, it was called The Liar King and intended to focus on then-PM Boris Johnson, before, of course, he resigned from office.

‘We were probably the last people in the country desperate for him to stay on, even after him,’ Al jokes.

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Next, the plan was to make The Queen the central character, until her sad passing, and so ‘this is show 3.5 right now,’ says Al. It’s a quest story which is broadly ‘future-proofed’, so they can tweak lines rather than change the entire set-up.

When I speak to the writers midway through rehearsals, they’re updating the script to take in Prince Harry’s autobiography. It’s safe to say Harry and Meghan’s roles will be expanded now plus, Matt adds, some of ‘the 
stuff [Harry] has been coming out with is so funny, it’s just a gift for shows like this.’

But the challenges of keeping the script current are compounded by the practicalities of putting a puppet show on stage, with the script, voiced by Al, Matt and many others, pre-recorded to create one single voice track which is then synced with the puppetry, it means that in ‘constantly rewriting the script, you then have to re-record it, get it in front of the puppeteers and re-rehearse the scenes,’ explains Sean.

It should all be worth it, however, for a blast of satire unlike anything else out there. It’s increasingly said that the world, and especially the political landscape, today is ‘beyond satire’ but Matt doesn’t believe that’s the case.

‘Politics exists in different ways but the fundamentals are still the same. You still get pompous groups that believe their side can do no wrong. Also social media is ripe for satire and the whole debate about culture wars and what’s woke and what isn’t. In a way, we’ve never had more raw material.’

‘I think it’s the worst time to do this show in terms of having to keep up with current affairs,’ Sean says, ‘but it’s the best time because I think people are really ready to pour ridicule, scorn almost, on [what’s going on in the world], and that’s what the show will do, not in a cultural cod liver oil, finger-wagging way, but in a way of total fun and entertainment.’

Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves The World is at Birmingham Rep from Wednesday until March 11.

MORE : Cheryl can’t stop smiling as she slips out theatre backdoor following rave reviews for 2:22 A Ghost Story debut

MORE : Brookside legend Michael Starke grateful for theatre fans amid cost-of-living crisis

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Tom Cruise back at Asha's Restaurant for lunch in a new guise

Eighteen months after Mission: Impossible and Top Gun superstar Tom Cruise was photographed outside of Asha's Restaurant in Birmingham city centre an even shorter Spitting Image version was spotted in black leathers

• 16:37, 4 MAR 2023

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'He's only a puppet!' as TV comedy and panto king Brian Conley used to say. But even a pint-sized, latex version of Tom Cruise still looked every inch like a Hollywood superstar when his new Spitting Image stage show version rocked up outside of the city's leading restaurants ready to lick his lips at another mealtime Mission: Impossible.

The real Tom Cruise was photographed outside of Asha's at the corner of Edmund Street and Newhall Street on Saturday, August 21, 2021 when he was in the city to once again play Ethan Hunt in the seventh instalment of his adventure series.

Two days later, the wider Mission: Impossible 7 crew also went for a meal at the restaurant, with manager Nouman Farooqui saying: "It appears that someone on set told them how good our Chicken Tikka Masala is... We hope you all had a fantastic evening with us."

Read more: Risky Business? Tom Cruise downs TWO chicken tikkas with extra spices at Birmingham curry house Asha's

Now thanks to the geniuses behind the Spitting Image series, Tom has been back to the restaurant in a new guise and just a week before the 95th Academy Awards will reveal whether or not his May, 2022 reboot Top Gun Maverick will be named as this year's Oscar-winning best picture overnight on Monday, March 13.

Thanks to the Birmingham Rep currently hosting a brand new show called Spitting Image Idiots Assemble - Spitting Image Saves The World: Live on Stage until Saturday, March 11, the team took the unusual step of allowing one of its leading cast members to brave the fresh air in Brum.

With no rain threatening to dampen his quiff, the Tom Cruise model was in safe hands as he recreated the actor's Asha's pose just 100 yards from Colmore Row. New model Tom was then taken inside Asha's for lunch after the actor had ordered a double portion during his visit ready to then be christened 'Two Tikkas Tom' by BirminghamLive.

As if revisiting Asha's wasn't enough excitement for one day, Spitting Image Tom was taken on a grand tour of Brum to recreate the actor's footsteps in 2021. The weather was colder in March than in August 2021, so this time the new Tom kept his designer jacket on.

He happily posed for pictures outside of the Grand Hotel - even though his £100,000 BMW car was stolen from outside during his stay, only to be found later dumped outside of a chicken shop in Smethwick.

Spitting Image Tom was also taken to the Grand Central atrium overlooking Network Rail's main concourse above New Street Station . It was here that Tom was spotted waving to fans during filming in the area occupied by Pho, the Vietnamese restaurant.

It's believed the area was being used as an international airport. On the concourse level on August 23, 2021, the Pret A Manger cafe was open but serving Libra film crew members only until 1pm.

The main topic of conversation amongst members of the public waiting to Tom to wave back again was whether or not he looked taller or shorter in real life. Director Christopher McQuarrie could be seen with him.

The next Mission: Impossible film is being released in two halves. Co-starring Vanessa Kirby and Hayley Atwell, Dead Reckoning - Part One is expected to be released on Friday, July 14, with Part Two currently slated to follow on Friday, June 28, 2024.

Other celebrity diners to have visited Asha's since Tom include pop star Ed Sheeran and the then Villa manager Steven Gerrard who both went in April, 2022. On July 28, Nouman Farooqui met the then Prince Charles during this walkabout in Victoria Square just three hours before the opening ceremony of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games .

Spitting Image at Birmingham Rep

In Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image Saves the World, famous celebrities are thrown together as Tom Cruise is tasked by King Charles with saving Great Britain. Greta Thunberg duets with Stormzy as Putin and Xi watch on from their premium seats in the stalls. Have they just come out for a night on the town? Or will they wipe out all of civilisation in a show that is simultaneously inspired and appalled by real events.

Meanwhile, Spitting Image characters featuring in show posters overlooking Centenary Square include Labour Party and Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer and King Charles III behind the Golden Boys statue of Matthew Boulton, James Watt and William Murdoch - three of the leading brains behind the Industrial Revolution. They were commemorated in 1956 with the statue by William Bloye (formerly head of sculpture at Birmingham School of Art) and sculptor Raymond Forbes-Kings.

The statue was returned to Centenary Square on April 29, 2022 to finally allow the square to be finished off having been officially opened on July 3, 2019 following two years of work to rebuild the originally-rebuilt version of the then Italianate square opened on June 9, 1991 by Labour council leader Sir Richard Knowles.

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