Hello and a warm welcome to the final part of our Review of 2013. Although October to December may feel like it only just happened, prepare to be amazed by how much you’ve forgotten. We were, but then we’re getting on a  bit.

So here are the best bits from the fourth quarter of the year – cherry-picked from news stories about both our regulars and a few new faces too. Enjoy.

OCTOBER

October was the month that Booshmania returned.  Just as the fantastic Behind the Boosh exhibition started its run at Proud Camden, showcasing the history of that most Mighty of comedic troops via the majesty of Dave Brown‘s photography, the boys were back in town.  Or rather, on the pier, as The Mighty Boosh went from the Soho Theatre to Tenacious D’s Festival Supreme in LA. A final (chaotic) UK warm-up show and a further run through at The Comedy Store, almost halted by a Visa saga, paved the way for a live performance that turned out to be one of the Festival’s highlights. Fan forums and social media platforms were buzzing with photos, footage and reviews of the show.

Another announcement that got us more than a bit over-excited in October was the news that Ben Wheatley is to direct the first 2 episodes of the next series of Doctor Who, starring the new Time Lord, Peter Capaldi. How good is that!?  We’re itching to see what happens when you combine one of the UK’s finest directors with its biggest export, now in the capable hands of an Oscar-winning acting legend to boot.  You can see the moment Capaldi became the Doctor in the 2013 Xmas special below…

More telly stuff, with the launch of Matt Berry’s new series, Toast Of London.  We’d been itching to see it since the pilot back in 2012, and it did not disappoint…

Elsewhere, Richard Ayoade established himself as a permanent fixture on prime time panel shows with a stint as team captain on Was It Something I Said? on Channel 4. Ayoade’s intellectual sparring with host David Mitchell certainly made our Sunday evenings feel a bit more highbrow!

What else?  Well, in movie news, there was an update on the cast for Paul King‘s long-awaited Paddington Bear feature film, which included mention of Rufus Jones and James Bachman. To end the month, TVO artists offered us a veritable smorgasbord of comedy options for Halloween night’s out, with special spooky performances from Colin Hoult and Richard Sandling.  And we were sad to lose the talented comedy actor Felix Dexter, who died at the too-young age of 52. He left behind an incredible legacy of great TV performances on shows like Bellamy’s People, Absolutely Fabulous, The Fast Show, Knowing Me Knowing You… With Alan Partridge, Mongrels and Alexei Sayle’s Merry Go Round to name but a few. He will be much misse, and would typically hate all this fuss about him, so let’s remember him with one of his silliest moments – dancing for Sport Relief alongside Rhys Thomas and Lucy Montgomery.  What a dude.

NOVEMBER

November was a great month for TVO shows on the small screen; as the marvellous Toast ended, many more shows appeared in its wake. The first was Yonderland, a family comedy-fantasy series, written by and starring the main cast of Horrible Histories including Simon Farnaby.

The next major series was Crackanory, a show that brought together notable writers and performers to create a darkly comic adult version of storytelling shows like Jackanory. There was a huge number of TVO connections including Kevin Eldon, Tom Meeten, Steve Oram, Alex Kirk, John ‘Willie’ Hopkins, Waen Shepherd and Gareth Tunley. The whole series can still be caught here.

There was no shortage of TVO faces on other shows either.  On radio, Aisling Bea got her own series Micks & Legends, and James Bachman featured in the new series of That Mitchell and Webb Sound. And back in telly land,  Michael Smiley turned up in Mitchell and Webb’s Ambassadors and Tony Law guested on Have I Got News For You.

We were also visited by the spirit of Entertainment Yet To Come as we revealed that Colin Hoult and Tony Way would feature in the next series of Ricky Gervais’ Derek, Alice Lowe will be among the cast of feature film AmStarDam, Richard Glover will be joining an all-star cast of Hollywood A-listers in Disney feature film Into The Woods and Waen Shepherd will star in new futuristic radio comedy 2525. In the here and now, regular TVO live favourite Club Fantastico: the truly mad comedy night hosted by the fab Steve Oram and Tom Meeten, also returned to say goodbye to 2013.  We don’t have any videos to accompany any of this, so here’s a classic slice of Oram & Meeten instead.

Booshmania also spilled into November with the continuation of the Behind the Boosh exhibition featuring a rather special signing by Dave Brown with live music, a DJ set by Dave and Mike Fielding and a huge pillow fight.  And to round off the month, we released our exclusive interview with Dee Plume from her visit to New York in October, so make sure to head thisaway if you missed that, and check out her music video for 2 Degrees Of Seperation again below.

DECEMBER

From a comedy perspective, it was difficult to ignore the 2013 British Comedy Awards in December, with the nominations announced at the start of the month and the star-studded awards ceremony taking place a couple of weeks later. From a Velvet Onion perspective, we were delighted to see nominations for Psychobitches, Horrible Histories, Count Arthur Strong (plus star Steve Delaney) and It’s Kevin. It was subsequently announced that Steve Coogan would be receiving a well-deserved special award on the night for Outstanding Achievement to Comedy. In the event, the TVO-connected nominees didn’t fair too well, but on the positive side, we were able to have a natter with a few of the clebs that were there:

This was also the month that gave IT Crowd fans an opportunity to bid the show a proper farewell, with Channel 4 dedicating an entire evening’s scheduling to the programme,  including a brand new documentary and an opportunity for fans to vote for their favourite episode. On Christmas eve we found out that ‘The Work Outing’ had quite rightly won the vote, and we also got the chance to re-watch Graham Linehan’s favourite episode ‘The Final Countdown’.

December was jam-packed full of TV happenings. A new series was announced for Matt Berry‘s Toast of London and for Steve Coogan‘s The Trip; Chris O’Dowd‘s award-winning TV series Moone Boy won a book publishing deal; Paul Kaye turned up in Ripper Street and the critically-aclaimed feature length drama, The Whale; there were Christmas episodes of Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Big Fat Quiz of the Year (featuring Noel Fielding and Richard Ayoade) to enjoy, and the TV premier of Sightseers occurred on Boxing Day. Phew!  And we could look forward to 2014 too, thanks to details on Vic & Bob’s House of Fools, co-starring Matt Berry and Dan Skinner, and the second series of This is Jinsy being confirmed as airing from 8th January 2014 on Sky Atlantic (series 1 is available here).

Harry Hill extended his TV-based insanity into cinemas with the December release of The Harry Hill Movie, which featured Julian Barratt amongst its cast; and fans of Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy got their chance to have Fantasy Man on their chest, with the launch of a new range of merchandise, designed by Dave Brown and Noel. Musically, Waen Shepherd‘s Gary Le Strange also re-released his fourth-ish album, Beef Scarecrow, which made us very happy.  Live dates for 2014 were announced, with Anna & Katy and Aisling Bea amongst them, whilst Rich Fulcher welcomed his F*cked  Up Friends to the Soho Theatre stage for a wonderful pre-Christmas show, and sent us this special message to promote his own end-of-year review, 2013: Mashed…

As is traditional, we ended the year with a thank you to our peelers – a free download of TVO-connected music, which is available until January 8th. In Holoserica Cepa 2013 features six tracks to download completely free, including some rather special exclusives. Just visit our Soundcloud page to get the EP, featuring the likes of James Cook, DeadDogInBlackBag, Stephen Evans, Richard Glover, Paul Kaye and Waen Shepherd.

We hope you’ve enjoyed coming on 2013′s journey with us – both the first time around and on this whistle stop review of the year. Thanks for your continued support – along with the artists that we write about, it’s you lovely lot that keep us doing what we do. Here’s to more fun and giggles in 2014!