Still Spitting at Sixty: From the 60s to My Sixties, A Sort of Autobiography

Still Spitting at Sixty: From the 60s to My Sixties, A Sort of Autobiography
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The Puppet Master is back with the inside story.Written by one half of the Fluck and Law partnership, which produced Spitting Image for many years, this book will catch up with creative spirit Roger Law to investigate life at sixty through the eyes of the puppet master.Roger Law, the evil genius behind the mocking, caricature puppets of Spitting Image – which lampooned Margaret Thatcher, ridiculed the Royal Family and gave birth to 'The Chicken Song' – unburdens his tormented soul and tells the awful truth of how it all came about.The award-winning series ran for eight years, with Law masterminding the corruption and undermining of an entire generation's respect for authority and institutions, and giving voice to such comedic reprobates as Harry Enfield, Pamela Stephenson and Rory Bremner. He subjected the British public to political outrages – to a reception of delight and indignation in equal measure – every Sunday evening from 1984 to 1992.When the satire bubble finally burst, Law found himself too young for retirement, too old to be retrained and without any discernable talent for domesticity or addressing a golf ball. In short, very thoroughly rinsed up.Confronted with 'one day off after another as far as the eye can see,' Law did what some people thought was the only decent thing he could do, possibly had ever done – he transported himself to Australia.STILL SPITTING AT SIXTY is Roger Law's account of his life in retirement down-under, filled with all the lunacy and flare that one would expect from the co-producer and creator of Spitting Image.

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HarperCollinsEntertainment

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This paperback edition 2006

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsEntertainment 2005

Copyright © Roger Law 2006

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN 9780007182503

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2018 ISBN: 9780008325497

Version: 2018-08-14

Collaborative writer on this book was Lewis Chester.

‘Between [Roger Law and Lewis Chester], they have garnished Law’s jolly life story with diverting details … Law sounds like he’s having far too much fun in the sun to risk a return to gloomy British satire. But his superb illustrations suggest that, should he ever tire of Bondi Beach, another brilliant career awaits back home in the periodicals that spawned his grotesque yet loveable effigies.’

Independent, William Cook

‘Many glorious illustrations … litter this book … [it] is worth buying just for the twin studies of kangaroos. Not that it isn’t a marvellous read. Still Spitting at Sixty is that rare thing, a ghost-written book that somehow distils its “writer’s” essential flavour … Hazlitt said we applaud satirists not out of love but fear. Impossible, though, to read this book and not love its author. Partly this is because it is so pungently amusing, partly because it is so unsickeningly life-affirming.’

Sunday Times, Christopher Bray

‘This is really a sublime autobiography … [it contains] some of the finest pieces of writing about Australia. Much more evocative than Bill Bryson. And the illustrations are wonderful.’

Sydney Morning Herald

‘Highly engaging … a breeze, a pleasure to read, as it leaps from anecdote to anecdote with aplomb and much humour. Like all the best people, Law is a dedicated fan of P.G.Wodehouse, and there are some lovely jokes here, if not the awesomely polished prose of his hero. This is a much more distinctive piece of work than the usual run of showbiz memoirs. And yet there is clearly something going on underneath … great entertainment, and his paintings, which somehow manage to be both bold and delicate, are quite something.’

Daily Mail, Marcus Berkmann

‘Filled with all the lunacy and flair that one would expect from the co-producer and creator of Spitting Image.’

Guardian

‘This entertaining memoir takes the reader behind the scenes at Spitting Image and on to a series of hilarious adventures as a “teenage granddad” in the Outback of Australia.’

Sunday Express

This book is dedicated to Richard Bennett, who is as essential to this sorry tale as Jiminy Cricket is to Pinocchio. Why didn’t I listen?


‘I can only see it going one way, that’s my way. How it’s actually going I have no idea.’

With apologies to Nick Wilshire (boxer)


THE LIZARD OF OZ


I put my money on a blue-tongued lizard called Eternal Youth, and lost a packet. To be fair, it had legged it bravely in the early stages of the race, but seemed to lose its way around the halfway stage before completely running out of puff. It eventually came in a distant, and dismal, fifth.

My instinctive first thought was that my lizard had been drugged or ‘nobbled’. Such practices were not unheard of in Eulo near Cunnamulla, Queensland, where the Lizard Race ranks as one of the highest events in the annual sporting calendar. But, on reflection, I think that Eternal Youth simply buckled under the weight of my expectations.

It was perhaps not eternal youth I was after (well, too late for that), but it was true that I had come to Australia in a quest for a new lease of life.



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