An Interview with Steve Nallon
In the 1980s, puppeteer and impressionist Steve Nallon became many of the most recognisable voices on TV when he lent his vocals to Spitting Image. Roger Crow talks to the Leeds-born actor and writer about that classic show, and his new book, Steve Nallon’s Ghost Stories.
Tell us about that first day on Spitting Image. What are your memories?
The first day on Spitting Image was pretty chaotic in the studio. I was trained as a puppeteer, as well as being a voice artist, because the idea was the puppet movement and the voice would be recorded together. That’s the way puppet shows had always been made, from Rainbow to The Muppet Show. So that’s what they tried to do. And we spent several weeks in a rehearsal studio. But then getting into the television studio at Central Television was just crazy. I don’t think we recorded anything that first day. I think it was just, ‘What do we do?’ Because the puppeteers work by looking at a monitor on the floor. The sets had to be two feet higher than normal. Essentially, they were on stilts. Because the puppeteers had to walk around the set. So obviously, they had to stand up to walk. And we were testing the levels, we were testing how to record it. And it was all a bit chaotic.
How did you come up with the voice of one of the best-loved Royal characters?
I went up to (producer) John Lloyd one day… well actually he came to me and said, ‘What new voices have you got, because we’re paying you lots of money, we want you to do new contemporary voices, Steve’. And I said, ‘I can do Beryl Reid’. And he looked at me and he genuinely was cross. He said, ‘Steve, this is a contemporary programme. We are not going to do Beryl Reid!’ And I said, ‘No, I think the voice of Beryl Reid would be rather good for the Queen Mother (slips into Beryl’s voice) ‘because we don’t know how she speaks, you see’. And he burst out laughing. And I’ve never seen anybody run faster. He ran to the writer’s room and said, ‘Steve has come up with this idea!’
“Traditional aspects”
I watched it from day one through the golden era. I was at school at the time, and that Monday morning after each show, everyone was talking about it, because it was the most brilliant thing. Looking back on it 40 years later, it still is. It was just perfect.
Well, yes, I agree with you. And we never really had a sense of the people talking on a Monday morning because we were making the show on a Monday morning. Our working day in the studio was Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to make the show that went out the next Sunday. People (in the UK) didn’t really have water coolers in the eighties. But, you know, it’s the American expression, ‘the water cooler moment’ where you stand around the water cooler (and talk about TV). I say we stand around our kettle and eat Jammy Dodgers (and say) ‘Did you see Spitting Image last night? Did you see what they did?’
What was the inspiration for your new collection of chilling tales?
I wanted in the collection, Steve Nallon’s Ghost Stories, to cover as many traditional aspects of the ghost story as I could. So there’s one called ‘I Was a Haunted House’, which is actually narrated by the haunted house. And then there’s a mirror ghost story. There’s also a Christmas ghost story. There’s a theatre ghost story, with a theatre ghost. And one of the things I wanted to include was ghosts on the road. That sort of ‘hitchhiker ghost’.
I imagine these stories have been bubbling away in your subconscious for quite a few years?
Bubbling away is exactly what happens. Now, I read Stephen King’s book on writing, and he also wrote a very good book called Danse Macabre, which is about the history of horror. He comes up with a sort of metaphor for where the ideas come from, and he talks about memories that never get filed away, being a sort of a sludge in your brain that never quite gets filtered. And he says that those are the ideas, that’s where the ideas come from.
Steve Nallon’s Ghost Stories is out now in paperback.
The audio version of this interview can be found at shows.acast.com/nostalgiahhh
Adopted Yorkshireman Roger Crow developed a passion for film and TV in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been a published film and TV reviewer since the 1990s; a world travel and restaurant critic since the noughties, and for the past decade has assessed the pros and cons of live gigs and theatre productions around the UK. His ideal day would involve reviewing a performance of Bat Out of Hell, followed by a Pad Thai while being serenaded by Texas on a cruise around Europe.
crowsfeat.com; nostalgiahhh film podcast
