On a trip to Paris, for an exhibition Gado took time to visit the set of "Les Guignols de l'Info", or the "News Puppets".
To Gado it was immediately obvious that the same concept would not only be a huge success in Kenya, but could also have an important social impact by exposing, with humor, the rampant corruption and mismanagement of the country.
Still, Gado pressed ahead, and in 2004 he managed to convince the French Embassy in Nairobi to send sculptor Gerald Olewe to France for a month.
There Olewe was trained by the team of experts who create the French puppets, and he learned how to work with sophisticated materials such as foaming latex.
Two more struggling years went by until in July 2007, Gado scrapped together a few shillings, got a little bit of money from the French embassy and produced a pilot for the show.
Producing the pilot was a challenge, but it brought together some key team members who would stick around for ever after that: director James Kanja, visual effects guru Pete Mute alias Majiqmud, and the talented group of puppeteers led by Jack Kibedi.
Then in November 2007, a TV journalist, Marie Lora, came to interview him for a story about how editorial cartoonists viewed the upcoming presidential elections in Kenya.
Marie proposed a complete change in strategy: if the show is too expensive for local stations, then let's make it free.
The objective of this visit is to interact with Nigerian media, political scene and market and with potential partners of Buni TV.