My gues is that there was no gun, he was just offered some money.

The end of the Guardian article reveals that a Radio 4 show of "The Boosh" will be airing in October.

Anyone hace details?

Oh, and a programme called "Surrealismo" is mentioned in the same article - featuring Stephen Fry.

Anyone have (or hace) details - synopsis/cast list?

Only a brief line in next week's Radio Times referring to it as a forthcoming Vic Reeves project.

So which aspect of being given money to appear on television like having one's soul sucked through one's eyeballs? Why is he moaning about being paid to work?


>My gues is that there was no gun, he was just offered some money.

"That's common assault!" I hooted triumphantly. But Tabatha was too busy eyeing up her next victim to acknowledge my praise. And so it went on, her with her rolled up newspaper and the boys attacking in single file like lambs to the slaughter. One by one, she beat them mercilessly, stopping only for an occasional drag on her cigar or a quick wank.
It was all over before tea.

The only written account, by the Roman captain Bruticus, of the conquest of Gaul in 260 AD.
(some details are thought to have been distorted in translation)

I think the cook was the butlers fancy man.
They were a morbid pair, constantly coughing up reasons to beat the scullery maid to death.

She chatted up the butchers boy m'lud.
She left bad air in the toilet m'lud.
She's curdled the milk with a glance, m'lud.
She stole a birdseye potato waffle m'lud.

All these and many more, so my father said.

Av' ya' ever ad it when ya' cock swells up an' don't swell back daan' a gain?

Julian Barratt told me once that his comedy career started when he was skint in America and the local stand-up club was offering a $10 open-mic prize. He was the only entrant and walzed off with the cash. Do you think he's been worth that tenner?

>She chatted up the butchers boy m'lud.
>She left bad air in the toilet m'lud.
>She's curdled the milk with a glance, m'lud.
>She stole a birdseye potato waffle m'lud.
>
>All these and many more, so my father said.

So you're a Robert Rankin impersonator now?

Mr Barratt is a highly underrated comedian and thank fuck he's escaped Avalon.

>Mr Barratt is a highly underrated comedian and thank fuck he's escaped Avalon.

Why? Where they bad? What were they doing to him? Where's he 'escaped' to?

Avalon have a terrible reputation for ballsing up people's careers by being pitbulls. Sean Lock, Julian Barratt, Peter Baynam are among many that have jumped ship. Their five year contracts are written in blood and they have a habit of keeping their lesser known acts in debt; continually making a loss at Edinburgh etc.

They have pissed off pretty much every broadcaster to the point where Fantasy Football League and Frank Skinner moved to ITV, whilst TGP and Baddiels Syndrome all ended up Sky (with big budgets but no viewers)

They also operate a production company as well as an talent agency which is techinically a conflict of interests. They tend to impose ridiculous huge budgets on pilots - which result in some series never reaching the screen (see Club Z) or some acts never even making it that far (as it said in the G2 article, it's astounding that there was no Boosh pilot some three years on from a Perrier nomination)

That as I understand, is the Cliff Notes. Mssrs Herring and Lee can now trot out the company line and correct me.

Much of the above may be right.

Having done production jobs for Avalon the production company/management group thing is both a difficult conflict of interest and sometimes a useful way of greasing the wheels.

And there is a problem in that as most new comedy is for E4 or Choice for the forseeable future new acts are never going to cover their high Edinburgh Avalon costs through initial TV work, as it will pay less than a particularly well paid live gig.

However

1) It is not astounding that there was no Boosh pilot 3 years on from a Perrier nomination. Think of all the nominees over the last say, ten years, and do the maths. Most of them haven't done pilots. I hope you wait with equal excitement pilot offers for all this year's nominees. There is not now, and has never been, a correlation between something being spotted as good, and TV types knowing what to do with it. Al Murray had 5 years of nominations and BBC had a script for 18 months they never looked at until he'd won.

2) The Boosh didn't ever submit a script to anyone for a pilot as such hoping, not unreasonably but also unrealistically, that TV execs would see them live and just 'get it', without any hard copy to pass around the office and have spurious opinions about.

3) I worked on the Club Z pilot and the budget was higher than TV half hour budgets are now, and we the writers and performers unwisely chose to make jokes during the show about how me might have spent money that wasn't available. But the main reason it faded away, whatever anyone who wasn't there tells you, was C4 were lukewarm about it and demanded 3 hrs more material in script form before making a decision, which wasn't really possible with their low level of interest. Conversely, a pilot I did through Avalon this year was actually cheap for its length and production values, but was still queried by top brass despite universal support from C4 comedy execs.

3) The figures invoked by BBC to justify loss of Fantasy Football and Skinner, always blamed on Avalon, are based on production costs rather than personal fees. The BBC trot out figures for French and Saunders to show that they have lower fees, but these are always the acts' personal fees, rather than the cost of 4 years' of programming, which obviously is what a non-in-house production company will need. We've been over this before, and until someone comes up with a breakdown of exactly what the cost of making 4 years of French and Saunders, as opposed to the cost of 4 years of FF or FS, is, it's hard to progress with this argument. Of course, the BBC will never make these figures available in order to protect the illusion of their 'fairness'.

5) It is true that the various talented and offbeat acts listed who have left Avalon will do and have done better since their departure, and most are happier and fitter, but one has to accept, in the grey stand-up culture of the early-mid 90's, that there was no other high profile agency backing acts which didn't fit the man-speaking-about-stuff template, and who had no obvious advert-gameshow-corporate gig high earners to cover their running costs. There's a whole generation of us, many since departed acrimoniously admittedly, who were the kind of comics which Avalon backed who were being told we 'weren't right for the comedy store', were 'too obscure', or were 'the worst act I have ever seen' etc., most of whom are now critically acclaimed, if not financially secure, and whose work is now plagiarised or replicated, at least in tone and style, by broadcasters and production companies who would not have given us the time of day a decade ago.

Comedy Cafe management -Kitson, Jimmy Carr, - seems to have the same ground level nouse today that Avalon had a decade ago, and doubtless will one day find themselves the subject of the same kind of speculation about their motives, as they make the transition from fringe outsiders to grappling with an industry keen to maintain the Groucho club Talkback-Hattrick-C4-BBC2 money-go-round status quo which somehow escapes criticism, as if the level of insider dealing operating within it is an acceptable part of the comedy business' ongoing existence.

That was a very balanced reply. Thank you Mr Lee.

I suppose the thing that beggars belief with the Boosh is that they still haven't appeared on TV. I really enjoyed their Edinburgh shows and just thought that it was a dead cert to be on TV. So who's to blame?
I heard that Baratt was advised not to take a lead role in Spaced, because of a pilot which never happened. Don't know how much of that is true.

Given that the Boosh has some kind of narrative, surely it would make the transition easier than a lot of stand up shows.

Either way, maybe the proof will be in the pudding. If the Boosh is on TV within the year, we'll know whether it's Avalon or not, eh?

I was at University with Julian and briefly shared a house with him. It's true about him going to America doing open mic.

Me and him wrote together for a bit and were going to do a show at the Student's Union and possibly at Edinburgh. I, of course, being chicken, dropped out.

I haven't seen The Boosh, but I saw The Pod (his previous project) on the Alan Parker telly show and thought they were very funny.

>That was a very balanced reply. Thank you Mr Lee.
>
>I suppose the thing that beggars belief with the Boosh is that they still haven't appeared on TV. I really enjoyed their Edinburgh shows and just thought that it was a dead cert to be on TV. So who's to blame?
>I heard that Baratt was advised not to take a lead role in Spaced, because of a pilot which never happened. Don't know how much of that is true.
>
>Given that the Boosh has some kind of narrative, surely it would make the transition easier than a lot of stand up shows.
>
>Either way, maybe the proof will be in the pudding. If the Boosh is on TV within the year, we'll know whether it's Avalon or not, eh?

XXXXX Again, anonymous, if The Boosh are on TV within a year it will not prove anything about Avalon one way or the other, as one might argue that the act's eventual success was due to incremental weight of profile partialy generated by their earlier support from their previous management. The only way to know who was truly to blame would be to observe the act's progress in a number of parallel universes in which, as a control experiment...

a) they had actually written a script for TV consdieration at the height of their heat circa late 99, instead of expecting to just be accepted on the strength of their live shows which, to be fair, were bewildering to non-converts on the regular occasions when the duo chose to under-achieve out of a perverse notion of chasing the now

b) they had not ever been managed by Avalon, on the assumption that any other major agency in 1995 would have seen the potential in their act...

delete option b as it would never have happened

Aaargh. Stewart. Stop it. The idea that the television industry should be aware of "Edinburgh Avalon Costs" as a THING unlike all the other acts and the way they manage their Edinburgh costs is HILARIOUS.

Edinburgh Avalon Costs! I pity you all but it isn't NORMAL. Don't be so Avalon-Solipsistic. It isn't NORMAL. Don't be such a mamma's boy. Take your eyes off the pendulum, look, look, over here! Jesus, we should have you kidnapped and de-programmed. Or is that going too far?

>>XXXXX Again, anonymous, if The Boosh are on TV within a year it will not prove anything about Avalon one way or the other, as one might argue that the act's eventual success was due to incremental weight of profile partialy generated by their earlier support from their previous management. The only way to know who was truly to blame would be to observe the act's progress in a number of parallel universes in which, as a control experiment...
>
>a) they had actually written a script for TV consdieration at the height of their heat circa late 99, instead of expecting to just be accepted on the strength of their live shows which, to be fair, were bewildering to non-converts on the regular occasions when the duo chose to under-achieve out of a perverse notion of chasing the now
>
>b) they had not ever been managed by Avalon, on the assumption that any other major agency in 1995 would have seen the potential in their act...
>
>delete option b as it would never have happened

I think you do the show down, Stewart (esp as you worked on it). I don't think the Boosh was that baffling to non-converts. Surely the Boosh was one of the most popular shows of recent years at Edinburgh. Anybody with any nous can see what good performers they are - Julian esp. Why do you defend Avalon quite so vehemently? Are you on a commission? They may have been a breath of fresh air when they first started, but they have become the company with the worst reputation - bar none. I even think you and Rich would be better off without them. And I don't mean that in a sneery way. It just depresses me that such an intelligent man would defend the biggest sharks in the business.

Ah the old Avalon debate - I have no great love for them but they do what they do very well and unlike Jongleurs have kept certain acts on their books that aren't the kind of pasteurised comedian we see too often on our telly's.

I know a little about their Edinburgh costs - from disgruntled ex-employees admittedly and they do seem ot be higher than any other agency. However, Avalon do employ more staff and produce more professional marketing than other promotors.

Could I sit on the fence any more if I tried ?

>I don't think the Boosh was that baffling to non-converts.

Bloody well was, mate. Went with different groups of friends five / six times. Wanted to get them into it (and impress them with my 'off the wall' comedy taste) Consistently liked or even 'got' by only a few. Kept defending them. Finally went off them for good last year when I found myself yawning through dreary 'Autoboosh' thing. Sad but Lee's right. Boosh are over. Time to move on.