The Mighty Boosh – History and Pilot

Although not many read my previous post on the Boosh, it was my review of The Mighty Boosh 1st series, but the love I have for the show makes me eager to share EVERYTHING about The Mighty Boosh. As I have said in that pots, I will now share the history of The Mighty Boosh.

The Mighty Boosh has long history of ups and downs.

Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt were solo stand up comedians. When Noel saw Julian’s performance at the Hellfire Comedy Club, he immediately thought that Julian has similar routine as him.

“ah…he’s the same with me, he has no chance [laugh]” ~Noel Fielding

Julian finally saw Noel’s comedy when both of them performed at The Enterprise.

Julian : “I did a gig here and Noel turned up to the gig and someone dropped out on the bill and Noel did a stand up and I didn’t know what he did but told me he is good”
Noel: “I do stuffs a bit like you”
Julian: “Yeah…we’ll see, we’ll see what you can do”

The two connected and started working together afterward. They even lived together for few years. Their first gig together was at De Hems Bar in 1998.

“If you have watched that first gig and gone up to them and say do you know you went Wembley in ten years? No way” [laugh] ~Noel Fielding

“Someone had written on the poster that we were shit” ~Julian Barratt

“There’s nothing more humbling than coming out of a gig hot and sweaty having done an hour-long show and seeing ‘you’re shit’ over your own face.” ~ Noel Fielding

The Boosh, sometimes together with Rich Fulcher, Michael Fielding and Dave Brown, had their first gig on North London’s Hen and Chickens Theatre in 1998. They did The Mighty Boosh, Artic Boosh and Auto Boosh. They won Perrier Best New Comer.

Here’s one of their early performances I found in Youtube:

From those performances, they got a chance to have a Radio show with 6 episodes. It was in 2001. The Radio Show’s episodes were Stolen, Jungle, Jazz, Tundra, Mutants and Hitcher. All those episodes were in the TVSeries with some changes.

Noel said that it was fun doing Radio Show because they could create things more than what appeared on television.

Finally, in 2004, they got their pilot which then led to 3 series (a total of 20 episodes) and 2 theatrical tours across UK.

“They said how is that going to work on TV because it’s really good live. So, perhaps we should have done it inside a television set” ~Julian Barratt

Top: From The Pilot; Below: from the series

Pilot

The pilot was made a lot simpler than the series, it was the same with episode 4, Tundra. The opening was the same with the series, Howard Moon (played by Julian Barratt) and Vince Noir (played by Noel Fielding) were introducing the show, but the background was different. The pilot also had that fake laughter that most sit-com has. I watched the pilot after the series and I found the laughter was a bit odd…I am glad that the producer thought that the laughter didn’t suit The Mighty Boosh and didn’t use it in the series.

The zoo where Howard and Vince worked was a bit like animation…rough painting and stuff. It changed to a better set in the series.

What I like about the pilot is the appearance of Richard Aoyade as Dixon Brainbridge. In the series he was replaced by the annoying Matt Berry (I didn’t like him back then in The IT Crowd and didn’t like him here in The Boosh).

Apparently, despite the difference in Vince’s hair style, Paul King (Director of the Series) still used the tundra part shot by Steve Bendelack.

You can watch the pilot in youtube, I put it here for you to see it easier….enjoy 🙂

Here are the differences between the Pilot and The Series

Top: Pilot;                     Below: series

The Zoo – Top: Pilot; Below: series

Bainbridge – Top: Pilot (Richard Ayoade);    Below: series (Matt Berry)

My Favorite scenes of Noel and Julian from the Pilot:

The people behind the pilot:

Director: Steve Bendelack
Associate Producers: Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding, Edgar Wright
Executive Producers: Henry Normal, Steve Coogan
Producers: Alison Macphail, Ted Dowd

I was a bit surprise finding Edgar Wright’s name in the people behind the pilot…I really hope one day Wright can direct Mighty Boosh Film.

Talking about the film, both Julian and Noel said they had half of the movie written but couldn’t finish it yet and after working together for so long, they thought they needed some time for themselves:

“Yeah, exactly. And everyone goes: ‘The Inbetweeners film! The Keith Lemon film! You can do it too!’ But Boosh was never like that, we never did it for those reasons, we will do it when we feel like we want to, I think. It has to have that creative spark and joy. Because, you know, we’re like brothers. We were on the road a long time and so we needed to find time to do some … theatre!” He chuckles. “And he needed to do his stuff.” ~Julian Barratt

I know that many of you who read my blog don’t know about The Boosh but I hope you will enjoy reading about them as I will continue sharing about them. There will be, at least, 5 more posts related to the Boosh 🙂