Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding, Dave Brown
It’s been four short years since The Mighty Boosh first burst into our lives courtesy of BBC Three, and there’s no looking back. The Boosh will forever be an essential reference point for our Topshop-wearing, irreverent, fanciful, boys-with-eyeliner generation. Show me the student who can heat up a can of soup without crimping about it; show me the teenage girl who hasn’t got a gigantic crush on Noel Fielding, the indie boy who doesn’t emulate (consciously or sub-) Vince’s effeminate retro panache.
The Boosh have won the Royal Society of Television’s Best Comedy Drama award, the Douglas Adams Award for Innovative Writing, two NME Best TV Show awards, and The British Comedy Awards’ Best New TV Comedy.
On screen, the Boosh is king. But how well can the surrealist mayhem be transferred onto the page?
The momentous task of making the audience laugh out loud is one that comes more easily to screen writers than authors as they have at their disposal a variety of factors that the printed word just can’t offer. Regional accents and comic timing are crucial in comedy, and the Boosh relies on techniques from music to outlandish costumes and snappy editing to animation to create its signature freakiness.
The Mighty Book of Boosh pulls it off by being very visual. Each page is colourful, creative and unique-Boosh fans would expect no less. It’s a scrapbook-style collection including old favourites from the show, such as crimp lyrics, and a fair bit of new material, which is just brilliant and the real reason we all want to get our hands on the book. Best bits include “Howard Moon’s Advanced School of Acting Expressionism’ (demonstrating the subtle difference between “Nordic jealousy’ and “baker’s confusion’) and “Bob Fossil’s Guide to Dance’ (frankly repulsive step-by-step photos of “the tummy rubby’ and “the horny milkman’). Other highlights are Naboo’s tarot card guide, Vince’s childhood tales from the jungle, and examples of Howard’s “ruddy and thrusting’ poetry.
A more unscrupulous Boosh needn’t have put so much effort into their book-there are enough committed aficionados who’ll buy it regardless of content and critical reception. However, the attention to detail is fantastic. Touches such as the Nanageddon bingo calls for every page number (“My father’s a male whore, no. 204′) mean that the book, like the show, contains more than first meets the eye.
A proportion of the book whisks away the curtain back-stage at the Boosh: photographs of the actors getting into costume, pages from Noel and Julian’s original notebooks, and felt-tip sketches of character ideas. So can the Boosh put a step wrong? Well, the picture-heavy format of the book means you actually run out of things to read sooner than you might like. Whole pages of photos from the tour, and of Fielding and Barratt with anonymous crew members, tip the line between substance and filler. These will doubtlessly be devoured by true devotees but risk being seen as padding by the rest.
Hard-core Boosh lovers: it’s a must-have, but you’ll have pre-ordered it off Amazon months ago anyway. For the not-so-fanatical, it’s a gorgeous, colourful book to own; but then you could always save yourself twenty quid and wait for the series to come back on 4oD.

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