When good TV goes bad: how Bo’ Selecta! became proper boring
Leigh Francis’s mix of relentless toilet humour and surreal celebrity satire made his twisted freaks..
Leigh Francis’s mix of relentless toilet humour and surreal celebrity satire made his twisted freakshow unmissable – until he let the slebs in on the joke
The component parts never made a lick of sense: a popular UK garage artist, a 1960s Ken Loach film, congenital incontinence, a deranged neckbeard who stalks celebrities. Yet for two years, beginning in 2002, Bo’ Selecta! was Friday night’s unmissable twisted freakshow, a riotous riff on fame that appalled as many as it thrilled.
Leigh Francis’s warped take on celebrity culture featured him in a series of sketches, wearing a series of unconvincing latex masks, playing a series of celebrities. Rory Bremner it was not. Francis’s grotesques were impressionistic impressions that barely looked like, and sounded nothing like, their targets. UK garage phenom Craig David was now a blunt Yorkshireman with a urostomy bag and a plastic falcon, Michael Jackson was a jive-talking badass and Spice Girl Mel B was a leery, drunken sex oaf. Stringing it all together was Avid Merrion, an unhinged celebrity stalker – a Transylvanian Rupert Pupkin in a neck brace.
