Celebrating 20 years of The Mighty Boosh

A new exhibition takes a look behind the scenes of the iconic show two decades after its BBC3 premiere.

In 1991, when Dave Brown sat down in a lecture theatre on his very first day of art college in Croydon, south London, a fellow student with a strikingly similar haircut sat down next to him. His new friend introduced himself as Noel Fielding, and the pair quickly got chatting. The rest, as it were, was history.

“We got on – we were into the same music, and then we just hung out throughout university and lived together. In 1994 we moved to Hackney with [future Boosh collaborator] Nigel Coan,” Dave recalls. “Noel always wanted to be a standup comedian, he was just doing a degree to get a degree – he didn’t have any other passion or vision.”

As Noel was dipping his toe into the waters of the UK’s amateur standup comedy circuit, Dave and Nigel would accompany their friend to gigs. “We would keep him company when he was going to the arse end of nowhere and standing in a pub corner with a bedsheet on the wall that someone had painted ‘Comedy Club’ on, and there’s like four people at the bar and they’re all looking the other way,” he continues.

Noel’s break came after an older comic named Julian Barratt – fresh off the back of winning the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award – was booked for a gig at their university. “We chatted to him after and Noel was asking him how he did it,” Dave explains, “Julian talked about the Open Mic awards, Noel entered that and did pretty well, and they started writing together because they liked each other’s stuff. That’s how the Boosh was born.”

After successful stage shows and a run on radio, The Mighty Boosh would develop into one of the most unique and influential television shows of the 2000s. With its surrealist humour, outlandish characters, costumes and psychedelic set design, it formed a cornerstone of a generation’s alt-facing youth culture dominated by Converse All Stars, smoky eye, Jagerbombs and cries of: “This is an outrage!”

Noel and Julian wrote the show, while starring as its lead characters Vince Noir and Howard Moon. Dave played a gorilla named Bollo and Noel’s brother Michael took on the role of psychic shaman Naboo. Nigel, meanwhile, created the show’s animations. The Mighty Boosh’s success was ultimately a collective, DIY effort that went beyond the off-the-cuff, improvisational jokes.

“I played loads of other characters, took all the pictures and designed all of the posters, DVDs and books – we would all get together and make the music,” he says. As an eager photographer since his early teen years, he would habitually take pictures backstage at gigs, on set and in changing rooms all the way from those early comedy circuit gigs to their sold out world tour.

Now, 20 years since its first series aired on BBC Three, Dave is hosting an exhibition Behind the Boosh 20 at east London’s Behind the Gallery. Showing dozens of behind-the-scenes photographs he took throughout its golden run on screen and stage the exhibition runs between October 10-13.

“Most of the cast were all mates, Nigel’s wife Ivana was the illustrator for most of the animation stuff – it was all a very family vibe, and I think a lot of that warmth came through in the show and the [exhibition’s] shots.

“We all met and bonded and realised everyone’s loves of music – Noel and Julian through their love of Frank Zappa, Noel and I through Nirvana and grunge,” he continues. “The exhibition’s a way of celebrating the fact that 20 years have passed since we got together and remembering that magical chemistry – it’s a flipbook of our lives.”