Noel Fielding

 ( 1973 Births ) 

In 1997, he first met Mighty Boosh collaborator Julian Barratt when they both appeared on the same comedy bill at a pub in north London. Barratt had had more experience in performing than Fielding. Later, on The Jonathan Ross Show, Barratt said that they had liked each other's comedy but didn't know if a collaboration would work, but, according to Fielding, they "had quite a good chemistry straight away".

On the day they met they both went back to Julian's place that night where Barratt played music on his Akai sampler while Fielding used a ping-pong ball to make an eye patch. They shared an interest in music, with Fielding more into rock and roll and pop, and Barratt preferring jazz, but both enjoyed electro. Both had played in bands before meeting. They also shared common interests in comedy, including Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.

In 2010, Fielding was supposed to perform a solo tour across the country. It was cancelled so he could concentrate on writing The Mighty Boosh film with Julian Barratt and creating an album. Fielding announced via Twitter that he was too busy to do the tour. From 2014 to 2015 Fielding toured the UK and Australia with a new comedy show An Evening With Noel Fielding that included both stand-up comedy and sketch comedy and along with Fielding included performances from his brother Michael Fielding and long-term collaborator Tom Meeten. Mighty Boosh collaborator Nigel Coan created the animation for the animated sequences that occurred in the show.

Montreal's Just For Laughs comedy festival had to be moved online, during the COVID-19 pandemic. On 20 October 2020, Fielding and Jimmy Carr live streamed a conversation from their respective homes.

Sometime around 1998 they then put on their first comedy show at Oranje Boom Boom, which "was very raw, but... hilarious", and afterwards got a gig at Hen and Chickens Theatre, a theatre bar in Islington, London. They then took The Mighty Boosh up to Edinburgh in 1998, followed by Arctic Boosh and Autoboosh. Fielding said about their first live show in 1998 that they had worked on their ideas together, and played "zookeepers who got sucked through our bosses' eyes and into a magic forest". Both Michael Fielding and Richard Ayoade appeared in a performance of the Mighty Boosh at the Hen and Chickens in 2002 during a live run through of a Mighty Boosh pilot. Fielding and Barratt said that they used to put all around the Hen and Chickens "to try and make it into a sort of play", but they "didn't know anything about theatre or what you did". The name "Mighty Boosh" was originally a phrase used by a friend of Michael Fielding's to describe the hair that Michael had as a child. From August 2008 to January 2009 they went on tour for a second time with a new stage show of the .

In 2001 The Mighty Boosh became a six-part radio show on BBC London Live, later transferring to BBC Radio 4.

In 2004, it became an 8-part TV show which aired on BBC Three, with a second series airing in 2005, and a third airing in 2007—20 episodes in all. In each series the setting changes, with the first series set in a zoo operated by Bob Fossil, the second in a apartment, and the third in a secondhand shop in Dalston called Nabootique. The Mighty Boosh almost did not make it to television, until Steve Coogan's production company sold the concept to the BBC simply by saying: "If we were young, we'd want to be them". The style of humour in the Mighty Boosh is often described as being Surreal humour, as well as being escapist and new wave comedy. Fielding has said "I think our show is magical and fantastical. We tell very intricate, weird stories. Vince Noir is quite modern, a bit of an indie kid; Howard Moon is... eccentric... and we rely heavily on Julian's music and my animation".

Fielding said that for the first three weeks of the TV show, he did all of the paintings for the animations, but this led to lack of sleep, so Ivana Zorn, Nigel Coan's partner, started doing most of the painting, with Fielding just designing the main characters. Fielding formed "Secret Peter Productions" with Nigel Coan who, along with Fielding and Zorn, helped to animate series 1 and 2 of the Mighty Boosh TV show, An evening with Noel Fielding and Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy. Coan also directed Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy as well as helping to write it along with Fielding. Dave Brown also contributed to graphics for the Mighty Boosh. Barratt composed all the music. Other regular Boosh collaborators included Michael Fielding, Rich Fulcher, Dave Brown, Richard Ayoade, and Matt Berry The Mighty Boosh won the Shockwaves NME Best TV Award three times in 2007, 2008, and 2010.

In 2006, Fielding and Barratt went on tour with a new theatre show The Mighty Boosh Live. Fielding later said "We always thought we'd make one show and that'd be the end of it. But after we won the Perrier Award, everyone was telling us that we had to do another, which we did and brought it to Melbourne and won the Barry, and then we made a radio show that won the Douglas Adams Award... It went on and on".

Fielding has said several times that he talked about writing a film with Barratt, and he would have loved to do so, but they never got around to it. They wrote two film scripts which did not make it to production. One was a " Rocky Horror Picture Show type thing", according to Fielding, in which Barratt played a character who has woken up believing himself to be the last man on earth. The other was an Arctic adventure – "because we always liked the Arctic".

Between 2006 and 2017 Fielding appeared thirteen times on the quiz show The Big Fat Quiz of the Year as well as its spin-off shows The Big Fat Anniversary Quiz, The Big Fat Quiz of the Decade and The Big Fat Quiz of Everything. He appeared on the quiz show three times with Russell Brand, nine times with Richard Ayoade and once with Eddie Izzard.

In 2011, he took part in Catherine Tate's TV movie Laughing at the Noughties in which he and other British comedians discussed the comedy highlights of the noughties.

Fielding produced his first solo series for Channel 4 network's E4 channel in 2011, as the broadcaster invested an additional £5 million in its comedy budget following the cancellation of reality show Big Brother. Fielding said of the project, tentatively titled Noel Fielding: Boopus: "I want to make something in the spirit of Spike Milligan or the Kenny Everett Show but using modern techniques. Blending filmed comedy with animation. Television needs a madman! I want the show to be psychedelic and beautiful but have charm and personality. If Dalí made a show hopefully it would look like this." The show began broadcasting in January 2012, titled Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy. The show's second series, titled Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy 2: Tales From Painted Hawaii, was first broadcast on E4 in 2014.

Also in 2011, Fielding performed Kate Bush "Wuthering Heights" dance routine for Series 3 of Let's Dance for Comic Relief, and reached the grand final.

In 2010 and 2014, he took part in Channel 4's Comedy Gala, a benefit show held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.

In March 2017, it was revealed that Fielding would co-host the upcoming series of The Great British Bake Off alongside Sandi Toksvig.

Fielding appeared as a contestant on Series 4 of the Dave comedy panel game Taskmaster in 2017, hosted by Greg Davies and Alex Horne: he was the overall series winner.

In January 2018, he was a panellist on QI alongside Russell Brand and Aisling Bea.

In 2024, Fielding played Dick Turpin in an Apple TV+ comedy series, The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin.

According to Neil Gaiman's blog, Fielding was scheduled to appear in the 2007 film Stardust, but had to drop out due to ill health.

The music video was directed by Richard Ayoade. He was referenced in Kasabian's "La Fée Verte", a track on their Velociraptor! album (his friend Sergio Pizzorno said "The line, 'I met Dalí in the street.' Dalí is Noel Fielding. And he is the modern-day Dalí"). Fielding also makes a brief appearance as Vlad in the video for another Kasabian song, "Re-Wired", riding a five-seater bicycle with the band, and appears as a patient in a psychiatric hospital in "You're In Love With a Psycho", in which he re-enacts the broken mirror routine from the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup with Pizzorno and Tom Meighan. He has also appeared in Kate Bush's music video "Deeper Understanding" as a means of thanks for the Let's Dance For Comic Relief performance.

Fielding paired up with Sergio Pizzorno (Kasabian) to form a band, Loose Tapestries, formed to provide music for Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy. Loose Tapestries released two albums and a Christmas single.