The new , animated itv 'satirical' programme , billed as a replacement to the old 'spitting image' : Just so peuriley unfunny .
A bunch of intelligent sixth-formers  could probably do  better than that .
'Posh and Becks' , Pete and Amy , Brownie and Darling . . 
So uninspiredly , predictably , amateurishly lame : Not satire at all , just a limply  facile attempt at something vaguely pertaining   to comedy .
Spitting Image could be peurile too though was sometimes wonderfully funny , when  the satire , sometimes edgily semi-affectionate and sometimes caustically cruel was intelligently and imaginatively realised .
The most  remembered 'spitting image' sketch is the one of Margaret Thatcher ( then PM ) and some of her ministers at a restaurant :
" How would you like your steak ? "
" Oh , Raw "
" and the vegetables ? "
" Oh , they'll have the same "
I also recall , after Cecil Parkinson had to resign as  a minister  due to an extra-marital-baby scandal , an SI sketch of MT installing " the first black member of my cabinet , Mr.Parkatkinson " , which was a blacked-up Cecil Parkinson .
And one of Prince Andrew calling Sarah Ferguson 'Lurgy' , and her applying her make-up by spraying red paint through a cooking-utensil 'calander' held over her face .
And one of Nigel Kennedy singing a song which included : " Ahm  the only cockney wot  was born 'n' bred in Brigh'-on " .
I did'nt feel entirely comfortable with their weekly portayal of the then President Reagan as a halfwit , though as we now know he was in the early stages of alzheimers whilst  still in office .
Successful satire requires sufficient quantities  of truth , exaggeration , cruelty and intelligently plausible ingenuity .
Maybe I'm partly looking backwards in time through 'rose tinted spectacles' but I'd say that Spitting Image was at best brilliant , and even at its worst still better than it's new imitator , which I doubt will ever be allocated a second series .

The protestors disrupting todays carrying of the olympic flame through london seem genuinely angry about the Chinese Govermnent's reprehensible human rights abuses , especially in Tibet .
They do'nt appear to be the usual 'rent a mob' lot , and unsurprisingly there's not a 'socialist worker' banner to be seen : They probably imagine China as some cloud-cuckoo-land socialist paradise !
As pointed out by Simon Jenkins in todays S/Times the 'wordwide olympic flame tour' is organised not by the IOC but by the Chinese Government .
So I can only applaud todays demonstrators , who are'nt physically attacking anyone , just loudly protesting , and trying to  extinguish the symbolic flame , working its way back to China via Tibet itself .
Bizarrely there's also a group of pro-china protestors , organised by the Chinese Embassy perhaps ( ? ) , so let's hope that the relatively peaceful disruption does'nt turn ugly .
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An ever thickening carpet of hailstones outside , I'm glad that neither I , my Mum or  cat are out in that !