SPITTING image co-creator Roger Law is casting his mind back to the 1980s heyday of the satirical TV puppet show, and to the times and he and his creative partner, Peter Fluck, ventured north to Scotland at the height of Thatcherism.

"Spitting Image was never about getting rich and famous, you know," he says. "I mean, we were quite upset and angry. So were a lot of other people."

Featuring puppet caricatures of prominent politicians, the royal family and other celebrities, the show portrayed the then Prime Minister as a tyrannical, cigar-smoking cross-dresser whose puppet became more evil-looking each series.

"Peter and I came to Scotland in the middle of all this Thatcher business," says Law, who "I mean, she pissed on Scotland for ages. Every time we went into a bar, the people knew what we did for a living, and you'd have all these drinks lined up. And we were quite ill when we got back to London.

"I know people in the south live in a f***ing bubble. I was cross – I wanted to do the show really badly. But the Scots were really pissed off. You could tell."

Those who worked on the show recall its ferocious deadlines and relentless production demands, but large parts of its audience still miss its satirical edge – especially in this time of Islamic State, Assad, Putin, President Trump, Farage, Brexit and Corbyn.

As for Roger Law – well, he is now 75, and as busy as he has ever been, immersing himself in ceramics. His works range from seven-foot high vases to delicate plates. In the words of his Twitter biography, he is a "Maker of pots in China as beautiful and witty as those [Spitting Image] puppets were ugly."

The Chinese reference is to China's "Porcelain City", Jingdezhen, in the northeastern province of Jiangxi, where Law has long been a frequent visitor. Porcelain has been made in Jingdezhen for some 2,000 years: its modern-day honeycomb of workshops turns out a million pots every week, radios blaring incessantly, the atmosphere above the city laden with huge amounts of silica dust.

Law's "very beautiful but grotesque" pots are characteristically striking, and much sought-after, but they have never been shown in Scotland until now. On Wednesday, at Edinburgh's Scottish Gallery, he and his friend Stephen Bird, a Duncan of Jordanstone-trained ceramist and sculptor, will jointly launch an exhibition, Transported. The idea for it centres on cultural transportation, both men having lived and worked in Australia and China.

Law's 21 exhibits at Edinburgh will include seven drawings, most of which date from his time in Australia, where he met and became good friends with Stephen Bird.

"I deported myself there after the end of Spitting Image," explains Law. "Some people said it was the only decent thing I'd ever done.

He went out there in 1998 with five grand and would spend 14 enjoyable years in the country. Though he had, in his own words, lost his appetite for modelling caricatures after so many deadline-crammed years at the helm of Spitting Image, he still had a fascination with what he terms "the surreal and grotesque", both of which were in plentiful supply in Australia. He ranged across the continent ceaselessly, visiting the wetlands, rediscovering a link with the natural world, drawing and painting unusual flora and fauna, such as Weedy Sea-Dragons and Cheerleader Crabs and Long-nosed Poteroos.

He couldn't help being struck, either, by the pervasive Chinese influence in Australia. "You can't not go to China if you live in Australia," he says. "Australia is like China's concubine. Everything that gets dug out of the ground [in Australia] gets exported to China.

"You meet a lot of Chinese people, obviously, as you're doing business. I met an Australian-Chinese ceramicist, Ah Xian; he was in Australia before Tiananmen Square happened but had already done a stretch for what they called 'spiritual pollution' – that's drawing in the nude. But he was the one who took me to Jingdezhen, in 1998.

"I don't speak Mandarin, and at first it was very difficult [in Jingdezhen], but Ah Xian made it very easy for me: he introduced me to artisans, and to workshops that would give me a room to sleep in, and some work space. I've now been working there, once or twice a year, since 1998."

The changes wrought in China since his earliest visits "have been astronomical, and there's nothing you can compare it to.

"It's very civilised there now, but when I first went the workshops had dirt floors, and there were plenty of rats in the workshops when everybody left, because people just used to cook food and throw the bits on the floor.

"That has all changed, but I had a hell of a problem with that when I first went. I came away very quickly but I couldn't resist going back, because you could find people to work alongside you."

It is not, however, always easy. "They look at what you want to do and they say, 'Why should I do that when I'm never going to look at it again?', which is a perfectly good response. But I've worked for over 10 years with a young carver named Wu Song Ming, and it was thanks to him that these crabs and sea-dragons began to appear on fine porcelain."

Law, who grew up in Cambridgeshire, was just a boy when he was first drawn to ceramics.

"You probably can cast your mind back, that if you're working-class, you have a front room that no f***er ever goes into. My grandma had one of those, and on display, the only thing of value were a few pieces of ceramics, in a glass case," he laughs. "Clarice Cliff Pottery, very jolly. But she had some Japanese stuff there as well."

Law attended Cambridge School of Art (where he met Peter Fluck), and in the 1960s and early 1970s, he worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for The Observer and then the Sunday Times.

But he always liked ceramics, he says: "At Spitting Image we modelled and sculpted all the time, in clay, and to keep sane from the mad programme we did things like a Margaret Thatcher teapot and a Ronald Reagan one, in Stoke-on-Trent."

Satire is in Law's blood, from an early association with Peter Cook in London's nascent satire scene in the 1960s through to Spitting Image. Is it present in his ceramics?

"I have fun with my work," he says. "It's basically grotesque creatures that I'm drawn to – 'grotesque' actually meant 'beautiful' at one point – and there are plenty of those in Australia, but I'm not trying to be out-and-out satirical. If you want a dose of that, you should look at Stephen's work." A gravelly chuckle comes down the line. "He has pots which actually are quite subversive."

He is looking forward to the Edinburgh show and to renewing his acquaintance with Scotland. He knows Glasgow well, visiting regularly to work with Mark Rickards, who produces radio documentaries for BBC Scotland (Rickards produced two series of Roger Law And The Chinese Curiosities, which have been broadcast on Radio 4).

"I'm always on the move," he says. "I have a picture on my fridge of one of those Glasgow tenement flats, and at one time I thought I'd move to Glasgow, because the f***ers make me laugh. They really are funny.

"I've always had a great time up there. But my wife [Deirdre] had to travel all over Australia with me, and we're now 75. She said 'No'," and he laughs again. The couple now live contentedly in north Norfolk, and in his studio, blessedly free of distractions, Law works on his ceramic designs and drawings.

Addressing a graphic design conference a few years ago, Law said that Thatcher and Reagan's caustic personalities and unpopular policies had made them "a gift" to Spitting Image. What would the programme have made of Donald Trump?

"Everybody has picked up on these small hands, haven't they?" he replies. "I think his mouth is so petulant that it actually moves like a chicken's arse. It has a similarity.

"One of the things that fascinates me is that he's sort of tacky. If you were that sort of unpleasant-looking, which he is ... The fake tan – he obviously wears f***ing goggles because he's got white rings around his f***ing eyes, hasn't he? And as for the hair – I think I saw something from Frankie Boyle the other day, saying if you were that f***ing ugly, why would you bother with the hair?

"But the thing is, I'm so glad we're not still doing the programme, though. We franchised it around the world. We made about 2,000 puppets.

"I wasn't in the first flush of youth when we did Spitting Image. I was about 40. It was a high-energy programme. Most of the people who worked for me were in their early 20s.

"But for a start, where would you f***ing begin with the world at the moment – to satirise it, for God's sake? It's was a craft process, Spitting Image, tied to a news deadline. It was an act of madness, really. It takes you years to get your adrenal glands back to the right size, you know."

What are his thoughts on the current state of satire? "Obviously, I'm a fan of Frankie Boyle. I think that it's sort of easier to get satire in front of people when people are actually earning a little bit of money.

"But I don't see it on the television. I really don't." He laughs. "Thank Christ it's someone else's turn. I don't want to have to do it."

Transported is at the Scottish Gallery, Dundas Street, Edinburgh, from November 30 to December 23. www.scottish-gallery.co.uk

For more information about Roger Law's work visit rogerlawceramics.com