Spitting Image never before seen episode featuring first appearance of Margaret Thatcher can now be seen by fans

Cambridge University is the centre of learning for historians keen to study the legacy of Baroness Thatcher, as home to one million of her personal and political documents.

Now a more unusual item has been added to the archives: the never-seen-before pilot episode of Spitting Image, in which the former Prime Minister's latex likeness makes its first appearance.

A sketch, written in 1983, features puppets of Baroness Thatcher and Sir Norman Tebbit coolly dealing with letter bombs as they open the Downing Street post.

One of the letters fails to explode. "Do you suppose it's a dud? Remind me to privatise the armaments industry, Norman, it's a disgrace," the Prime Minister says.

The writers of the sketch were not to know that, a year later, Baroness Thatcher and Lord Tebbit would narrowly escape the Brighton hotel bombing.

The pilot episode was never broadcast because, in the words of the show's co-creator, Roger Law, it was "awful". It also featured Idi Amin eating an opponent's brain, and a sketch in which Japanese dignitaries lament the fact that "the hideous Yankee long-pigs seem to have the ridiculous notion that we all look the same to them", but are in fact represented by puppets that look exactly the same. The sketch ends with them all committing hara-kiri.

Was that a bit racist? "You're talking 1983," Law said. "It is only in retrospect that you realise it was a pretty obscene thing to do."

The video and transcript of the pilot, and the Thatcher puppet itself, are among 32 boxes of material that Law has donated to Cambridge University Library, where they will be housed alongside the papers of Isaac Newton and the letters of Charles Darwin. The main Baroness Thatcher archive is at the nearby Churchill Archives Centre.

Dr Helen McCarthy, lecturer in modern British history at Cambridge, said: "The Spitting Image archive promises to open up an entirely new perspective on the social, cultural and political shifts of those decades.

"I've routinely shown my students clips from the programme to liven up lectures on Thatcher and Major; it's wonderful to think that researchers will soon be able to tell the Spitting Image story in full detail and situate its unique brand of satire in the wider changes of the era."

Law, 77, created the show with Peter Fluck, and it ran on ITV for 18 series from 1984-1996.

One of the most memorable scenes found Baroness Thatcher ordering a meal in a restaurant, accompanied by members of her Cabinet. "And what about the vegetables?" asks the waitress. "Oh, they will have the same as me," Baroness Thatcher replies.

A handful of other puppets will also come to Cambridge, including Mikhail Gorbachev and Alan Bennett. Many of the others were sold at Sotheby's.

Law moved to Australia after the show ended and turned down several offers to resurrect Spitting Image. But now he is hoping to bring it back, focusing on Trump's America, and he hopes that Netflix, Amazon or another US streaming service will pick it up.

"I don't want to do it here. I did it for 13 years. I've got about 10 or 15 years left if I'm lucky. Do I want to spend it repeating Spitting Image as it was? No.

"I want to be somewhere where you can do what you want, and that would be on the net or pay-per-view. I don't need some halfwit at ITV or the BBC telling us what you can or can't do. I'm too old."

A show aimed at international audiences would not feature Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn. Besides, said Law, "it would be a waste. May is going to be gone before we could do it."