How did Noel Fielding comedy ‘The Mighty Boosh’ get its name?
Come with us now on a journey through time and space…almost 15 years have rattled past since the final episode of the beloved surrealist comedy The Mighty Boosh graced our screens. Like the legendary Monty Python, The Mighty Boosh is a comedy troupe, but where the former made their bucks satirising religion and the conventions of western civilisation, the latter reached into the brains of creators Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt and had a good ol’ rummage.
While they rose to their big break on television, the troupe covered an impressively diverse range of platforms. Having started out as a stage production depicting strange tales loosely inspired by Fielding’s parents’ stories of taking LSD in the 1970s, The Mighty Boosh developed into a titanic realm of creative madness.
The weird and wonderful world of the Boosh drew the attention of the BBC, who signed them for a series of radio-based shows in 2001. Following a successful pilot, Steve Coogan’s company, Baby Cow Productions, agreed to produce the first series of the televised recreation for BBC Three in 2004.
As Boosh hit the screens, it rapidly gained a cult following from like-minded weirdos with a soft spot for surrealism, Fielding’s affable charm and Barratt’s passion for smooth jazz and stationery. Much of the series’ success came from its wide range of intriguing characters, including Naboo the Enigma, played by Noel’s younger brother Michael Fielding; Bollo, the talking gorilla and, of course, Old Greg, the “legendary fish. Some say he’s half man, half fish, others say it’s a 70:30 mix of the two. Whatever the percentage, he’s one fishy bastard.”
As I escaped to the world of the Boosh in my youth, what I never questioned, for some reason, was the name of the programme. “Mighty” is a word we’re all familiar with, but what does “Boosh” refer to? Thankfully, in an interview on the BBC’s Comedy Greats programme following the airing of The Mighty Boosh’s third and final (for now) series in 2007, Michael Fielding shone some light on the matter.
Asked what The Mighty Boosh is, Michael replied: “It’s inside the minds of Noel, Julian and the rest of the cast. The name comes from… I used to have curly hair when I was little, and I had a little friend who was Spanish, and he used to call it the ‘mighty bush’ [sounding like ‘boosh’], and it kinda stuck. So when my brother wrote the show, he called it The Mighty Boosh.”
After revealing that the show’s name came from a comical mispronunciation, Michael was asked whether the show would return for a fourth series. He explained that he hadn’t heard anything about a fourth series but mentioned that “there might be a film… there’re talks of writing a film or an extended episode.”
Sadly, after a 15-year gap, we still haven’t been treated to a new series or film. Since the final episode in 2007, the troupe have only reunited once for The Mighty Boosh Live: Future Sailors Tour in 2008-09.
But fear not fellow Boosh fans. On January 2nd, 2020, Noel Fielding posted a photograph of himself and Barratt on Instagram with the promising caption: “There really wasn’t enough Boosh this decade! let’s try and rectify that in the next one.”
