Mighty Boosh Live 2008 – Wembley

About a year ago when Boosh mania™ was at its height I was asked if I wanted to go see them live and I jumped at the chance. The downside being the tickets would be for the next December, 12 full months away but I was still really excited.

Allot happens in a year and in this case the third series of the Might Boosh tv series came and went, the second series is one of my favorite things ever with classic episodes all the way through. The second series introduced us to the Shaman council and my favorite episode ever “The Priest and the Beast“.  The third series however was a bit of a let down, not bad by any means it just had so much to live up too after the peak of series 2 it couldn’t hope to match it.  Series 3 did have a few classic moments and one standout episode “Party” where the comedy was clearly focused on the characters and saw the return of the popular shaman council.

When December arrived and I remembered where I was going I wasn’t that excited,  I had seen the amazing first (well first big boosh) live gig they did on DVD and loved it but I just kept imagining that the next one would be more like the third series.

Luckily I was wrong (well mostly), the day came and we went up to Wembley Arena on the tube and arrived with plenty of time so enjoyed a pretty good meal in the restaurant upstairs.  The show itself started much the same as the last live show with Vince and Howard standing in front of the awesome Boosh curtain with scribbled monkey face on it (the eyes glowed allot this time).  The show had lots of classic musical numbers throughout with lots of them being updated to full songs with new beats, eels went from being a bit rubbish on the program to a pretty catchy tune and was a high point of the show (never thought I’d like that tune).

The first half is mostly introductions to all the characters with each character having a small sections to do their thing, a standout being Tony Harrison (the pink tentacled head) who got rolled on resting on a sofa which went wrong half way through when Noel Fielding inside the sofa slipped down “I got cocky and fell off my little shelf, its an outrage”.

The second half was taken over by Howard and his “serious theatre” but Vince soon took over by use of blackmail and brought in dancing gay robots. The finale was a string of classic songs from the series remixed and extended into a long medley of tunes which went on a bit too long (was worried I would get stuck in Wembley…not a nice thought).

Very impressed and look forward to seeing it again on DVD.