“And What About the Vegetables?”

I have to be honest, I didn’t exactly have a rule against embedding GB News material on here. I didn’t think I really needed one. What was the likelihood that I’d ever have cause to do it?

Unfortunately, back on the 18th March 2024, something happened which forces me to briefly acknowledge the channel’s existence. Piers Pottinger, public-affairs consultant and former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, makes a bit of a twat of himself:

A Spitting Image scene from the 1980's has just been quoted as an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher. 🤣🤦🏻‍♂️ #GBNews pic.twitter.com/XrH0omh3Sm

— Karl (@Karl_Downey) March 18, 2024

As was widely reported at the time, Pottinger seems to be confusing reality with a famous Spitting Image sketch. But rather than judge the entire thing from a 19 second Twitter video, you can see the whole contribution from him below. It starts from 37:38 in, with the anecdote itself at 44:36:

Just for the record – and in case either of the above videos disappear at any point – here is a transcript of the relevant section:

PIERS POTTINGER: I mean, there was a famous time when she was having dinner with her cabinet in the Ritz, and they were taking the order for the main course, and they all ordered beef or lamb or fish, and the waiter said to Margaret “And the vegetables?” She said “They’ll have the same as me.”
ANDREW PIERCE: I don’t know if that story’s true, but it’s a lovely story.
PIERS POTTINGER: Well I like to think it’s true.
ANDREW PIERCE: Certainly apocryphal. Certainly apocryphal.

“Apocryphal” is one way of putting it, yes. Maybe it’s just too much to expect Andrew Pierce to be able to quote chapter and verse when it comes to famous Spitting Image sketches. To be fair, when it comes to the reporting of all this, vanishingly few people could identify the actual episode of Spitting Image in question. Most contented themselves with linking to a blurry YouTube video of the sketch with no date attached, in the wrong aspect ratio.

So our first point of order is to correct that. The sketch which Pottinger mistakenly presents as a true story appeared right at the very end of Series 2, Episode 3, broadcast on the 20th January 1985; the traditional place for putting a great sketch to leave the audience wanting more. So after a rousing rendition of “Robson’s Glory Boys”¹, we get the following:

Very droll, Minister. But here’s the thing: the above joke is most certainly not original to Spitting Image.

*   *   *

Despite my faintly pathetic attempt at a mic drop there, I think that point is also widely known, at least among a certain kind of comedy writer and/or fan.

Isn’t it trad. arr.? An old gag repurposed. Like the Big Country Member Buzzcocks joke.

— Simon Blackwell (@simonblackwell) June 30, 2020

The above is almost certainly true, and one other person in that thread mentions they first heard it in the playground. Even Steve Nallon, the voice of Margaret Thatcher, recalls that it was an old joke when Spitting Image did it:

SPITTING IMAGE Vegetable Sketch. So old a joke I was against even doing it but John Lloyd said it was only a quickie so the sketch went ahead. Sorry, can't remember whose name was down as writer. By the way, I used to get £25 everytime it was shown, but sadly those days are over. https://t.co/KKGFIZBwBU

— Steve Nallon (@SteveNallon) July 1, 2020

Still, it seems a worthwhile exercise to see how far we can trace the joke back in print, even if I deeply suspect its true oral origins are destined to be shrouded in mystery forever. And it turns out that before it was a political joke… it was a sports joke.²

Take a look at this by Bill McAllister, in the Aberdeen Press and Journal on Christmas Eve 1983. For context, Bill was known for his commentary on the Highland Football League:

Some of my past offerings as the Highland League team of the year have produced explosions straight out of “The Day After” so I give a four-minute warning of my latest choice.

In previous years I’ve been told that my selection is worse than the TV festive films.

It has also been inferred that my logic is as clear as the formula for the EEC fish quotas and that the decision to allow high street stores to sell spectacles might help my eyesight.

I’ve felt like the well-known manager who stalked into a plush restaurant with his team trailing behind him. Sitting down he barked: “I want the best steak in the house”.

“Certainly, sir, what about the vegetables?” inquired the waiter.

“Just give them soup,” came the reply.

“Well-known manager” is the most interesting thing there. That feels like a vaguely-censored version of the joke. Surely we can find a version which names the actual manager in question?

Indeed we can. If we go back earlier that month, to the Manchester Evening News on the 7th December 1983, Paul Hince has this to say on the sports pages:

It’s comforting to know that at least some managers retain a sense of humour – even when their sides are staring relegation in the face and they are facing the sack.

How about this gem, for instance, from Wolves manager Graham Hawkins whose side are currently holding up the rest of the First Division.

He sat down recently with his players for a meal in a plush hotel and was asked by the waiter for his order.

“I think a steak would do very nicely,” said Hawkins. “What about the vegetables, sir?” asked the waiter.

Replied Hawkins with a sideways glance at his players: “Oh they can have a cup of tea and a round of toast.”

Graham Hawkins became manager of Wolves in August 1982, and the team did indeed face relegation at the end of the 83-84 season. The first of three consecutive relegations, with the team ending up in Division 4 for the 86-87 season. And frankly, writing a paragraph about football makes me even more nervous than embedding GB News videos.

So can we get any earlier reference than this? Yes… but only one month earlier. Unsurprisingly given the topic of the joke, we have to turn to that august publication, the Wolverhampton Express and Star, on the 19th November 1983. Your columnist is Gerry Anderson (not that one):

The story is that Wolves manager Graham Hawkins was sitting down with his team for the pre-match lunch when the waiter approached him for his order.

“I’ll have the fillet steak,” said Hawkins. “Certainly sir,” replied the waiter, “and what about the vegetables?”

“They can have fish and chips,” snapped Hawkins.

This is an extremely cruel joke, and I’m telling it here to stop it being told elsewhere. However, I hope they get the point. That would make four.

Frustratingly, this is where the trail runs cold, at least when it comes to my research. I can’t believe the above was the first time this joke was published. And yet I can’t find any mention of it before this.

I hand the question over to you. Can anybody do earlier than November 1983?

*   *   *

Which leaves us with just one final thing to ponder. Because, yes, this gag clearly isn’t the best thing Spitting Image has to offer. It’s lived on not because every single person remembers it from its initial broadcast one evening in January 1985, but because it’s a joke that people can grab, repeat and enjoy without needing too much context.

People don’t often remember the sketch, they remember people remembering the sketch. It’s the Del-Boy-falling-through-the-bar of Spitting Image. The kind of thing which shows up in documentaries and the like, because it works as shorthand.

I do think there’s a little more going on here, though. Regardless of the above, I think that Spitting Image manage to do the very best version of the gag. “Oh, they’ll have the same as me” is a beautifully pure version of the punchline; far better than the slightly overwrought “They can have fish and chips”.

But watch the Spitting Image sketch again. The first or second time around, it’s the punchline which hits you. But what makes it endlessly rewatchable for me is the cabinet’s reaction to Thatcher:

“That’ll be absolutely marvellous…”

The punchline is funny. The cabinet just calmly accepting the insult is even funnier. And that’s something which sketch shows can do, that no amount of newspaper columns – or indeed, jokes spoken aloud – can manage in quite the same way.

And that’s why I’m in love with TV comedy. It allows you to do the really good bit.

With thanks to Rob Keeley for prodding me to write about this one, and to Bobby McNally for some initial early newspaper research.

1. Yes we’ll go go go
   All the way to Mexico
   And we’ll stay stay stay
   ‘Til the second game we play
   Then we’ll fly fly fly
   Back to London by July
   We don’t expect you’ll thank us
   ‘Cos we’re all Bobby’s bankers
   A load of petrol tankers
   We’re Robson’s Glory Boys! ↩

2. In the years since Spitting Image, the gag has been attached to many people, including Nancy Reagan and Charles Haughey. Which is all very interesting, but we want to see how far back we can go. The joke was attached to people like Reagan and Haughey much later on. ↩

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