But he dismisses claims that Mr. Schneider is thespittingimage of the general, saying that his rival's face is too thin to represent the older Napoleon.
However, in this scene (as in several others) the playwright succumbs to the temptations of parody, and a miscast Haydn Gwynne towers over the queen in the manner of the celebrated shaving-and-cigar-smoking "Spitting Image" caricature of the Iron Lady.
"Thatcher was one of the main reasons we did 'Spitting Image' -- I knew why I was doing it and I would have killed my mother to have done it, " he said.