Did Spitting Image have to turn Paddington into a coke-addled wreck?

I should confess, upfront, that Avalon is my management company. I’ve been with them over 30 years. In fact, I was in their offices a while back and was invited to visit the Spitting Image studio. They had taken over a small office in a let’s-do-the-show-right-here-in-the-barn kind of way. When I snook in, an amazing Tom Cruise puppet was being filmed against a green screen and it really felt like something special and subversive was happening. Then I saw him. In the corner sat a snaggle-toothed, bug-eyed bear in a grubby duffel coat and hat. My bubble of enthusiasm burst. “No,” I said, “you can’t do that.” There was no irony in my tone. I was upset. “Not Paddington,” I added, almost to myself.

At this point, of course, I had no idea what their plans were for this creature, but just the sight of it made me feel sad. Having seen the show, I now know he’s portrayed as an abusive, coke-addled podcast host with a thick Peruvian accent. Paddington’s co-host is Prince Harry. The StudioCanal bear did a sketch with Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, of course, as part of her platinum jubilee celebrations. The Spitting Image version is, it has to be said, edgier.

As a foul-mouthed podcast host myself, I should be loving all this. Elsewhere in the show, the prime minister is sodomised by Donald Trump. This didn’t trouble me at all. So what’s my problem with nasty Paddington? Matt Forde, one of the creators of this new Spitting Image, said in an interview that it’s fun to take the piss out of characters on the show, but “there must be that grain of truth to it”. I can see the metaphorical veracity of Trump sodomising Sir Keir but I find no truth in nasty Paddington.

Paddington Bear – brace yourself, you cynics – is kind, generous and helpful. At a push, he’s an image of the migrant we could stand a bit more of in modern Britain. Such was his, or his family’s, faith in human nature that the only paperwork he arrived with was a label that said: “Please look after this bear. Thank you.” But it proved to be enough for a family of white English people to take him into their home. Surely Nigel Farage would have reported him to the authorities. In a fearful, angry, divided Britain, it’s all right, isn’t it, to have one tiny example of hope, ring-fenced and exempt from satire? Paddington has no bad bits to satirise.

I suppose it all goes back to 1902. The American president, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, was drawing a big blank on a bear hunt so some of his team caught a bear, subdued it with heavy clubs, tied it to a tree and invited the president to shoot it the easy way. Unlike Spitting Image, Teddy decided the bear was too soft a target.

The story spread, as did the mythology. A popular cartoon celebrated the event, which was quickly becoming a symbol of fair play and decency – yes, even in politics: a sort of anti-satire. With each reprint, the cartoon bear got sweeter and cuddlier. Retail stepped in and soon American children were falling asleep with their little arms around a teddy bear. The message seemed to be that even something as scary as a bear became cuddly if treated with kindness and compassion.

Cynics have been desperate to undermine lovable bears ever since. When I was a schoolkid, the underground magazine Oz was charged with obscenity for showing kindly kids’ favourite Rupert Bear “attempting intercourse with Gipsy Granny”. More recently, at a comic con, I met a charming man called Craig David Dowsett, who stars in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, in which Pooh stabs one female student to death and feeds another into a woodchipper. Paddington, himself, took a body blow in Newbury back in March, when a fibreglass model of him was ripped from a bench, leaving only a grey and empty shell. A sign explaining that “Paddington had to leave on a short adventure” was put up to console local children.

I really like the new Spitting Image. It’s properly funny and I’ll carry on watching it. The physical shock of getting deeply offended is the only cardiovascular I get nowadays. But I like the show best when it’s metaphorically pulling down the Edward Colston statue in Bristol rather than ripping Paddington off his bench in Newbury. I suppose we all need to pick a side.

Photograph by Antonio Olmos/The Observer