Despite the fact that I was 10 or so at the time, I can name almost all of Margaret Thatcher's mid-to-late-Eighties front bench. Nigel Lawson, Kenneth Baker, Ken Clarke, Norman Tebbit, Douglas Hurd, Michael Howard, Michael Portillo, Edwina Currie, Malcolm Rifkind, John Redwood, John Major, Michael Heseltine. All those guys. All those great old guys.

Now I'm 33, and read broadsheets, and have an iPhone - yet I am pushed to name half as many Labour politicians. Gordon Brown, Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith, Alistair Darling ... is Ed Balls an MP, or just an “adviser”? I'm never sure. Campbell's gone. Hilary Benn? I only know him because I know his dad. Prescott? Did he retire when Blair went? Haven't a clue.

The big - and indeed, when I take into consideration that I had a jam and cheese sandwich for breakfast, maybe the sole - difference between my ten-year-old self and now is Spitting Image. It was on at 10pm on Sunday; my parents would video it (“On the video! We never had one of those when I was a kid! Yer nan had to nick coal from the workhouse just to boil an egg!”) and let us watch it on Monday morning - an emollient against the start of the scouring school week. All my schoolmates watched it.

And while we loved the sweary Bob Geldof, and sang Never Met a Nice South African in the playground, all the compelling characters were political. How could a child fail to be gripped by the oily man who was a slug (Kenneth Baker), or the man with the ice-cream hair (Douglas Hurd), or Margaret Thatcher herself - with her glowing Terminator eyes and terrifying, strangly, angry voice? I think a part of me thought that Spitting Image was a sitcom, and that they had made all these characters up.

Spitting Image meant that talking about how sinister the Minister for Local Government, Michael Howard, appeared was something one did behind the science block, while smoking a cigarette. This is why I hope that Headcases is good. Because if it is, it will mark my re-entry into political engagement. I'm personally ablaze at the possibility of being able to identify all the Shadow Cabinet, and name their primary characteristics - and all for little or no effort. A good satire show is the current affairs equivalent of a magic pill that makes you lose a stone overnight, in your sleep. In fact, I wish they weren't bothering with the celebrities. I can make enough gags about Kerry Katona and Amy Winehouse myself, thanks. What I need help with is the hard stuff - health ministers, Eastern European presidents and heads of foreign aid quangos.

Sadly, I suspect Headcases will end up feeling more like homework than free play. Rory Bremner, who's behind it, may be an impeccable mimic and pin-sharp political analyst, but he hasn't been funny in the past 20 years, God bless him.

Ultimately, there will be a simple way to see if the show is a success: if, by the end of the month, every 12-year-old can do an impression of Hazel Blears. And what an odd, possibly terrifying but ultimately better, country that would make us.

Matthew Parris: if Headcases isn't cruel, it won't work

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