Bo' Selecta

Bo' Selecta! (title taken from Craig David's song, Re-Wind) 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, brutal (and pop culture-penetrating) catchphrases, vulgar jokes and imagery, and the exposing of celebrity pretentiousness disguised as enthusiastic fan worship.

Despite being a relatively new show (starting in 2001), Bo' Selecta! has so far been rewarded with three complete TV seasons, a Christmas special, a hit music single (with video) called 'Proper Chrimbo' and a diverse (though mainly UK) fanbase.

In reality and in interviews, Francis is seldom seen outside of his role as the celebrity-obsessed and sexually tilted Avid Merrion. Merrion essentially presents the show. 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 TV's Big Brother chained up in another. By the time Series 3 comes around, Avid becomes conscious of his newly hightened status in popular culture and is given the freedom to talk one-on-one with his celebrity heroes on his own chat show.

As an aside, Francis also plays 'The Bear', a foul-mouthed and easily aroused but completely adorable bearcub who intimidates showbiz figureheads in his treehouse.

The main body of the show, however, involves a host of celebrity caricatures. This perhaps evolves from the puppets of 1980s political satire Spitting Image but rather than puppets, it is masks that provide the likenesses. 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. For example, the Bo' Selecta! version of The Spice Girls' 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 periods or hemorrhoids. Perhaps the most popular or iconic of these rubber-faced creations are those based on Michael Jackson and Craig David.