#Trinity60‍

Trinity Boys Choir was asked to suggest a solo boy to appear in the ITV Election Special edition of 'Spitting Image'. Andrew Sinclair, then in the third form, was selected, and he had the job of singing 'Tomorrow belongs to me 'as the grand finale in the programme, with the familiar grotesque puppet politicians satirically reflecting the text of the song. The programme was screened directly the polling stations closed on the day of the General Election, 11 June. Andrew Sinclair was only the second real person to be featured on 'Spitting Image' - the first being Dennis Healey.

Andrew Sinclair writes about the whole experience

It all started one Monday evening in May when I travelled to Lime House Studios in Dockland. Here I was shown how the 'Spitting Image' puppets were made, and the finished articles.

I then met the producer, Geoffrey Perkins. He seemed to be more interested in my hair than anything else: it was too dark. When I went home, I wondered what I was letting myself in for.

The following Friday I went to a sound studio in London to record the song. The recording was held up because the backing took longer than expected, so I played pool while I waited. After seven games I was at last called to the studio. I put on headphones and stood on my own in the studio to do the recording. After two hours, I finished recording - and to think the whole song only lasted three and a half minutes!

Recovering from this, I travelled across London to a wig specialist firm where I met the wig representative from Central TV. She chose a wig for me which I did not like.

The following week, I travelled to Birmingham to do the TV recording. Since the recording started fairly early in the morning, I travelled up the night before and stayed in the fantastic Holiday Inn Hotel which had a swimming pool, sauna and various restaurants.

At 10 a.m. I went to the Central TV studios which were only separated from the hotel by a hair salon. I had been in the studio only five minutes when I was taken out to the hair salon: the wig idea had been scrapped, and my real hair had to be bleached. I did not mind. After two hours of agony I came out looking completely different. I then went to get into my costume, a pin stripe suit with a red tie.

Then I went onto the set where I met Graham Williams, the director. I was shown how to work the puppets. The big ones needed three people. One person had to control the hands by putting their real hands down the sleeves and putting them into a pair of 'gloves'. Another person had to control the face and mouth (the puppets were very flexible). The third person had two levers, one to control the eyeballs and the other the eyelids.

The set represented a German beer garden. After the first 'takes', we all broke for lunch. I thought at this point it was going to be easy, but it was not to be. After lunch we moved to another part of the studio which had a blue background. This was so they could impose something else behind me after I had been recorded. Later on in the afternoon, I had to stand on a box with my head held back. One of the make-up staff put drops of glycerine into my eyes so that when brought my head down it looked as if I had been crying. After this the stills photographer took some pictures of me with the puppet of Mrs Thatcher.

Then I went back to Croydon dreading what my mother was going to say about my hair.

Andrew Sinclair