Negbores About Negbores

Negbores was written and created by Andrew Paul Bowden, a male of British origin. He arrived in Australia in 1977.

Andrew had been a script writer on the popular Grandbladder Television soap
opera Coronation-Chicken Street, a key programme of the EyeTV network in
Britain.

Upon his arrival in Australia he sought work writing for a number of the Aussie soap operas but did not succeed.

Despite his setbacks, Andrew was not deterred and in his spare time, wrote and created a soap opera for Australian TV giant HeyBC called Smeldarado. Based in a luxury seaside resort in New Zealand, only the pilot episode was ever made owing to the set being destroyed by a herd of manic sheep.

Despite these setbacks, Andrew's biggest break was still to come. In 1990,
Negbores was born.

The soap was short lived after it was discovered that there was already a
soap opera called Neighbours. Channel 79 promptly sacked Bowden and axed the show.

However, former news reader turned TV producer John Munday was inspired and took up the show, selling it to the Home Service channel. It was renamed
Neggybours to avoid confusion with it's counterpart. Even this name was short
lived - the show metamorphosed into Negbours and finally, following a High
Court writ from the makers of Neighbours, the show became Negbores.

Broadcast on a weekly basis, the original run was in Spring 1997 for 13 episodes. Following the collapse of Home Service Channel, Negbores was sent
into exile, although the original episodes have been continuously repeated on
repeats channel Aussie Gold.

Left unemployed, Andrew forged strong connections with John Munday Television, the company which helped bring Negbores to the masses and in 1999, John Munday himself set up a TV station just to get Negbores back on air.
Andrew was commissioned to write and make six more episodes, which finally
made it on air in Spring 2000. The final episode of series two, left a major
cliffhanger.

Back to the real world...

And that's how this page would read if the author had moved to Australia in 1977. As it was, I was only born in that year; I've never written a soap opera; and the whole thing was just a silly spoof I wrote whilst bored at university.

Anyone who ever watched Neighbours on BBC One in the 1980s and 1990s (and how many teenagers didn't?) will recognise the inspiration for much of it. If you didn't, it probably won't mean much to you.

Still, at the time, it gained critical acclaim. From some anyway. Well, one person. On 25 June 1997, Negbores was awarded the coveted Random Award No.8, at a star studded ceremony in Durham City, England.

Just before giving the award, Random Awards organiser, Charlotte Hastings,
proclaimed:

"Who was the mystery voice? Would the puns get any worse (er, yes!) and why was Hannah constantly referred to as 'goyt'?"

The award takes pride of place in our shelf next to the cheap, tacky souvenir from Bognor and the bottle of Boyles's Spot Remover.

 

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