Leigh Francis
After four years of Art College, Leigh landed his first job as senior artist for the infamous Yorkshire Evening Post. His fetish for dressing up and making home videos took over after his first TV appearance on Channel 4's Take Over TV.
During a live audition on another Channel 4 show Watch this Space, his comic talent was spotted and he was snapped up by The Paramount Comedy Channel.
Whilst at Paramount, Leigh learnt many aspects of television both in front and behind the camera. Starting in the graphics department, Leigh then moved on to development where he was responsible for coming up with ideas for interstitials for The World of Paramount.
Leigh began developing characters and started staging meetings with production companies in restaurants in various guises. Word got round about him and he landed a commission, his own show on Play UK. And so, TV stardom began.
Leigh was nominated as Best Newcomer at The British Comedy Awards in 2002 for his work on C4’s Friday night show Bo' Selecta!, fronted by celeb super-fan Avid Merrion. It was from this series that many of his now infamous characters (and their associated catchphrases) were born such as Mel B, Craig David and Kes and of course Michael Jackson. Another two series' of the hilarious sketch show followed and one of his characters The Bear even got his own spin-off show, A Bear’s Tail! At the end of 2005, Avid moved to Los Angeles with his wife (and sister) Sacha to open up a hotel, which was packed to the rafters with Hollywood A Listers in Avid Merrion’s XXXmas Special. Avid and Sacha later returned to their star-studded Hollywood hotel for a new series, Bo in the USA.
2009 saw the death of Leigh’s hero, Pop legend Michael Jackson, and so Leigh did a tribute to him in the only way he knew how, by donning the infamous Bo’ Selecta! rubber masks one last time and creating a one off unique program Cha’mone Mo’ Fo’ Selecta! Featuring highlights of MJ’s life for E4 and on DVD.
Leigh first introduced us to Keith Lemon “Businessman of the Year 93” In 2007 when Keith fronted a brand new comedy travel series, Keith Lemon’s Very Brilliant World Tour, his first ever show for ITV2. The series followed Keith as he took some time out to travel the world with the aim to “fatten his horizons and texturise his conversations” and is available on DVD now.
The fifth series of Celebrity Juice is currently being shown on ITV2 and sees Leigh’s comedy creation Keith Lemon present his very own quiz show sandwiched between bang tidy co-presenters Fearne Cotton and Holly Willoughby and funny man Rufus Hound. Keith and his team captains welcome an array of top celebrity and comic guests to join their topical quiz extravaganza every week. In 2010, “Keith Lemon’s Fit” hit the stores and fast became a number 1 selling hit…!
