Putin's Puppet Show Tonight...

Back in mid-February, The Last Leg contacted me to ask if they could use all my old puppets for a skit they wanted to do on their Friday 17 February show (Series 10 Episode 4, I believe). They also wanted a new Farage puppet, all this with only two days' notice! On top of this, they asked if I was free all afternoon and evening of Friday to act as a puppeteer, and could I bring along anyone else? So I roped in my old muckers Dodders and Paul, while Channel 4 got in three other guys to be puppeteers, and their props people made bodies and costumes for my puppet heads.

They already had Trump, but my other puppets were supposed to portray non-famous figures (namely, three Russian whores and three Russian spies) and so they had to be heavily disguised to conceal their actual identities. The whores were played by Boris Johnson, Nick Griffin and David Cameron, while Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Benjamin Netanyahu played the spies!

We actually performed the skit - a parody of The Muppet Show song rewritten as The Putin Show - live on air! It went like a dream, the TV people were without exception lovely to work with, no air & graces or attitude on show, and afterwards they laid on a taxi at their expense to ferry us and the puppets back home.

Oh, and Nigel? Well, ironically, after the mad rush to make the new puppet, Channel 4's lawyer got the jitters and said he couldn't be used... That's showbiz, I suppose.