New sketch responds to lawsuit

Spitting Image has responded to the legal action launched by Paddington’s  copyright-owners… with a new sketch mocking them.

Lawyers acting on behalf of StudioCanal this week filed a High Court complaint against producers Avalon over the internet revival of the satirical puppet show, which depicts the beloved bear as a foul-mouthed drug lord.  

Their coked-up version of Paddington now co-hosts a fictional YouTube show entitled, The Rest is Bulls*!t with Prince Harry, which last night released a sketch responding to the lawsuit, called Bear-ly Legal.

In it, Harry says: ‘Hey, Padds, have you seen these legal papers we've been served from Studio C Anal? What do you make of them?’

To which the bear says: ‘I make a tube to snort some Colombian flake. ¡Ay, ay ay! Paddington goes to party town!’

‘There's hundreds of pages here,’ the Prince adds, with Paddington agreeing it’s 'soft, strong and very long’ before wiping his arse on the documents.

‘I thought you went to the woods,’ Harry responds, before reminding viewers to ‘like and subscribe before Paddington gets cancelled’. 

The new show is  written and performed by Al Murray and Matt Forde, who have also now responded to the writ.

Murray – best known for his Pub Landlord alter ego – told the Radio Times: ‘We’re baffled by that, to be honest. If we were going to expect anything, it would be a hard stare from Paddington.

‘It’s the oldest thing in comedy. We’re not saying we’ve done anything particularly original. [Paddington] is normally presented as this very "goody-two-shoes" character and we’ve flipped him over.’

Forde added: ‘They’ve fallen into a bear trap of their own making. We’re getting tons more views as a result of the lawsui's publicity, so more people are watching this depiction of Paddington that they don’t want anyone to see.’

However both commented on a worrying trend for what Murray called people wanting to ‘shut other people’s jokes up’ and an ‘attack on comedy’.

‘In my experience, people find you funny taking the piss out of things, until you take the piss out of something they like. Then they don’t find you funny anymore,’ he said, adding that the same people who issued the writ were probably the same creatives who would have been outraged by Jimmy Kimmel being pulled off air.

Forde added: ‘It’s terrifying that pressure can come from all sorts of different places. I think the risk is that these kinds of authoritarian instincts exist on left and right.

‘Comedy is an easy first target because people don't like being laughed at, but it's not comedy that they have an issue with. It's the freedom of speech.’

A full new web episode of Spitting Image is expected later today.

Published: 10 Oct 2025