I Love Those Slags: One Fan Explains Her Obsession With The Mighty Boosh

By Noreen Sobczyk

A few years ago I was ill and staying at my parents’ home in the wonderful land of superfluous cable channels. While stirring around under the covers, feverish, I stumbled upon a British program that was surreal and involved an alternate universe and a cab ride with Death himself, but I could find no information regarding the show. It was so wondrous that I thought it may have been a dream.

Some time later I began searching the Internet for clips of a British show, because it had an episode that referenced Mods. (Well, wolves dressed as Mods riding Vespa scooters, but Mods all the same). Damned if it wasn’t the same show. I then became obsessed with owning the series, and to my dismay, nothing was available in America.

So I swallowed my old fogey, non-technically-savvy pride and asked a friend to look into procuring it for me through devious means. Nothing ever came of it and I was growing restless, so I deferred to my nephew who was more wise in these matters. He went through a series of intricate Russian mafia contacts, white slave traders, and traveled by fishing barge to Asia where he obtained some episodes.

Unfortunately, he was savagely attacked by a rogue band of gypsy baboons, and died alone and soiled on the journey. But I got my DVDs, so that’s the important part of the story, really. Maybe none of that happened and he found a torrent site, but that’s the sort of stream-of-consciousness thinking that watching the show inspires. Those DVDs contained my white whale. Ladies and gentlemen, I now owned episodes of The Mighty Boosh.

I devoured those shows. It was a precious discovery. It was an unlucky person’s equivalent to hitting the lottery, because what I had stumbled into was a whole new world. It has made me laugh so hard that I actually weed a bit.

Photo © 2006 The Mighty Boosh/Dave Brown

For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it’s a comedy which focuses on a pair of friends: a pseudo-intellectual, jazz-obsessed buffoon named Howard Moon (Julian Barratt), and a fashion-obsessed, cotton candy-brained buffoon named Vince Noir (Noel Fielding). They’re the yin and yang of hilarity. Season One was set in a zoo, “The Zooniverse.” Season Two found the duo sharing an apartment with a shaman named Naboo, and his gorilla familiar Bollo. And Season Three was based in the “Nabootique,” a shop Naboo owned, in which Vince and Howard worked.

But the settings were really only there as a starting point, as the troupe sets off on wild adventures, or as they refer to each in the opening, “a journey through time and space.” Each episode finds the pair in outrageous locations meeting strange creatures and stranger people. Some sort of trouble ensues, usually one of the duo is in danger of “getting bummed,” or both are threatened with death. They meet bizarre characters like a crazed cockney slasher, a part Rick James/part sea creature watercolor enthusiast, and a group of sex-crazed Yeti, to name a few. And all episodes feature original music. It’s surrealistic comedy melding with music and pop culture references. But that feeble description just scratches the surface, and explains only the bare bones structure of the show.

And there is structure, because this sort of brilliant madness does not succeed without an inherent attention to detail and some form of comedic and creative discipline. Just as a Jazz session might have one basic melody that evolves and stretches so far beyond its fabric that it becomes unrecognizable—until the recognizable melody returns—The Mighty Boosh takes you on a metaphoric magic carpet ride. (Or sometimes an actual magic carpet ride with a whiny, antagonistic, disembodied, fuchsia head sporting tentacles, a.k.a., Tony Harrison).

It’s a Grimm’s fairy tale mixed with a Frank Zappa album with a dash of magic and the wild-eyed wonderment of childhood. And that’s what makes the show so special. It makes me feel the unrestrained giddiness and joy I felt as a child. It is intelligent escapism. It’s a half hour vacation from planet Earth. And as of October it’s available in a boxed set with tons of bonus features.