Director Paul King, responsible for bringing the outlandish antics of Garth Marenghi and The Mighty Boosh to stage and screen, has signed to Stink for worldwide commercials representation.

King joins Stink with a background in TV and theatre direction, having carved a niche for himself as one of Britain's leading cult comedy craftsmen. Alongside regular collaborators Richard Ayoade, Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett, King has had a significant impact on the current shape of British comedy.

"When I left university, all the normal channels for aspiring theatre directors were united in their total indifference to my self-proclaimed talents," King recalls with his trademark quick wit. Having offered his services to the legendary clown director Cal McCrystal and received a non-committal response, King took what he calls "the worst temp job in the world - it was at this Evangelical church where they made you do Scottish country dancing with the community on your lunch break. I got a call asking me if I wanted to go to Switzerland and work with Cal. I didn't even stay for the Dashing White Sergeant."

From his first lucky escape, King went on to steer award-winning comedy shows for Ayoade and Fielding at the Edinburgh Festival, transitioning to TV out of accident rather than intent. "I never set out to direct television," he admits. "I rather grandly fancied myself like a Bergman, directing films in the summer and plays in the winter. But film execs don't tend to hang round fringe theatres and it was getting pretty hard to make ends meet."

Another chance intervention lead King to direct the first series of The Mighty Boosh when Steve Bendelack, who'd helmed the pilot episode, was called away to direct The League Of Gentlemen film. The rest of that chapter is history, and King is currently waiting for the release of his first Warp Films feature, Bunny and the Bull, later this year.

"The film is about a young man who can't leave his flat," King reveals. "He's living this chronically over-organised life, and during the film he remembers a journey he went on round Europe with his best friend, Bunny. Because it's set in his unreliable memories, all the landscapes of the film are made up of objects in the house, so we go to worlds made of newspaper and clock parts. The first section is set in a Happy Meal box and it culminates in a cardboard horse race. It's kind of hard to explain, but it's trying to be funny and sad."

On top of that he's currently in the early stages of working on the Paddington Bear film, which is awaiting the green light, and is already setting his sights on future projects. "I really want to do something epic and exterior," King says of his commercial prospects. "I want to do some explosions in bullet-time. I want to drop a camera out of a chopper over an erupting volcano. But it would be nice if it had some jokes in it as well. Budgets are really stretched at the moment and I'm used to making new worlds on a shoe-string, so I'd like to continue doing that in short form stuff. As long as I get to blow some shit up I'll be happy. I cannot stress that enough."


Check out the image gallery for a sneak peek at some stills from King's forthcoming feature, Bunny and the Bull