Bo' Selecta!

Bo' Selecta!
Title screen of Bo' Selecta
Created by	Leigh Francis
Developed by	Leigh Francis Ben Palmer
Starring	Leigh Francis
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	28
Production
Executive producer	Spencer Millman
Running time	25 mins
Original release
Network	Channel 4
Release	September 6, 2002 – December 28, 2004

Bo' Selecta! is a British TV comedy sketch show and the brainchild of writer/performer, Leigh Francis. The humour involved in Bo' Selecta! derives from masks, puppetry, extremely bizarre and surreal humour, brutal (and pop culture-penetrating) catchphrases, vulgar jokes and imagery, and the exposing of celebrity pretentiousness disguised as enthusiastic fan worship. The title is taken from the UK Garage subculture, and literally means "great DJ!". It was most notably used in the Artful Dodger and Craig David's song, "Rewind", which is the most likely source of the title. According to Craig David's Life Story in the extras section of the DVD of the first series, "You can say it when you're happy... Bo' Selecta! I've won a tenner!! You can say it when you're angry... Oh, Bo' Selecta!! Or you can say it for no reason at all... Bo' Selecta! There. Just said it. Didn't mean owt."

Bo' Selecta! has so far been rewarded with three complete series, a Christmas special, two hit music singles (with video) called 'Proper Crimbo' and Double-A side 'I Got You Babe' (credited as Avid Merrion, Davina McCall & Patsy Kensit)/ Soda Pop! as well a diverse fanbase in the UK.

In reality and in interviews, Francis is seldom seen outside of his role as the celebrity-obsessed and sexually tilted "Arachnipusian", Avid Merrion, who speaks with a generic Eastern European accent and uses bizarre euphemisms for certain words or phrases, such as "sex wee" for semen. The character essentially presents the show. Avid also gives the impression of being a crazed celebrity stalker, one of his favourite phrases being "I fucking love celabrities!!" In the first two seasons of Bo' Selecta! Avid lives in his flat with his dead mother slouched in one cupboard and Craig Phillips from Big Brother chained up in another.

In the third series, Avid had become conscious of his newly heightened status in popular culture and was given the freedom to talk one-on-one with his celebrity heroes on his own chat show. The new format of the show compared to the first two series was not as well received, and many hardcore Bo' Selecta fans do not consider Series 3 to be anywhere near the standard of Series 1 and 2.

Francis also plays The Bear, a foul-mouthed and easily aroused but completely adorable bearcub who intimidates showbiz figureheads on his treehouse set. The Bear sketch is essentially a combination of two televisual mediums: the children's show and the celebrity interview. The Bear sketch also features a red squirrel puppet named "Steven", who can only communicate in delightful squeaks and is frequently referred to as a "ginger twat" and a "knob jockey". He is very cute and innocent, but The Bear hates him and accuses him of being rude. With his thick rimmed glasses and being a small character in a chair, some have noted that The Bear has a passing resemblance with Ronnie Corbett.

The main body of the Bo' Selecta! series, however, involves a host of celebrity caricatures. This perhaps evolves from the puppets of 1980s political satire Spitting Image (though where Image employed complete puppets, Bo' Selecta! draws from masks and occasionally prosthetic limbs on human actors). Leigh Francis first used the 'charicature mask' style in short skits for the Paramount Comedy Channel, many of the characters used in these skits would later appear in Bo' Selecta. Leigh Francis plays the vast majority of these celebrity characters himself. Some characters such as Kelly Osbourne or Dale Winton are quite obvious send-ups of their real-life counterparts but others have become bizarre distortions of their namesakes that bear little obvious relationship with the original celebrity. For example, the Bo' Selecta! version of Spice Girl' Mel B seems to be mostly aesthetically based upon out-of-work darts aficionado Jim Bowen and spends most of her time talking about her vagina ("Smell that? That's me minge!!") or hemorrhoids. The Bear character is partially based on comedian Ronnie Corbett. Perhaps the most popular or iconic of these rubber-faced creations are those based on Michael Jackson and Craig David. The show moved on to spawn the spin-off series A Bear's Tail, a spoof sitcom centred entirely around the bear character, although it was nowhere near as successful, and not the hit Channel 4 were hoping for.

Bo' In The USA

In April 2006, a fourth series of Bo' Selecta! was commissioned by Channel 4. Known as "Bo! in the USA", the first episode aired on 13 October 2006. Verne Troyer, best known for playing the vertically-challenged character "Mini-Me" in the second and third Austin Powers films, features regularly as The Bear's Hollywood agent. Barunka O'Shaughnessy stars as Sascha Merrion, Avid's wife and sister. The series is set entirely in the USA, with Avid and Sascha running a luxury hotel, but retains most of the regular characters, as well as some new ones. [1]

See also

• Shamone
• Bingo wings

External links

• Bo' Selecta Bo' Selecta Website
• Bo! in the USA at channel4.com
• Google Video - Bo' Selecta!
• Bo' Selecta! at IMDb