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Noel Fielding
Noel Fielding (/ˈnəʊəl/; born 1973) is an English comedian and actor. He was part of The Mighty Boosh comedy troupe alongside Julian Barratt in the 2000s, and has been a co-presenter of The Great British Bake Off since 2017. He is known for his dark and surreal comedic style. Fielding began performing stand-up comedy when he graduated from art school in 1995, and in 1997 he first met Mighty Boosh collaborator Barratt when they both appeared on the same comedy bill at a pub in north London. Around 1998, they performed their first comedy show together in London, which was a mix of stand-up and sketch comedy, then later in 1998 they took the show, The Mighty Boosh, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They returned to the festival in 1999 with Arctic Boosh, and in 2000 with Autoboosh. In 2001 The Mighty Boosh became a six-part radio show on BBC London Live, called The Boosh later transferring to BBC radio 4. In 2004, the Mighty Boosh became a television show The Mighty Boosh, which ran for three series on BBC Three until 2007. The show generated a cult following and won awards. From February to April 2006 they went on tour around the UK with the stage show The Mighty Boosh Live and then toured the UK for a second time from September 2008 to January 2009 with The Mighty Boosh Live: Future Sailors Tour. During the 2000s, Fielding also had smaller roles in a number of comedy shows for Channel 4 including Nathan Barley, The IT Crowd, AD/BC: A Rock Opera, and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. After The Mighty Boosh, he wrote and starred in two series of a solo show for Channel 4 called Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy, which ran between 2012 and 2014. He has also appeared as a team captain on the BBC Two comedy panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, originally from 2009 to 2015, and again since 2021, and as a guest on Richard Ayoade's Travel Man series. He has also appeared in several music videos. Fielding, along with Sergio Pizzorno from the band Kasabian, formed the band Loose Tapestries as an alternative project in 2012, to provide music for Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy. Fielding has also exhibited his artwork in London, and collaborated with Fendi for their autumn/winter 2021 menswear collection. Early life and education  Fielding was born in the Westminster area of London in 1973,[1] the son of Royal Mail manager Ray Fielding and Yvonne Fagan. He is of French descent through his grandmother.[2][3] He grew up in Mitcham, Southwest London[4] When Fielding was three years old, his father remarried, and Fielding was mostly raised by his grandmother.[3] His father and stepmother Diane would later become more involved in parenting during Fielding's mother's illness in the 1980s. His mother had two more children before dying in 1990 aged 37 years old, from complications caused by liver damage.[5] Fielding has commented that "My parents had lots of parties... They were hopelessly bohemian."[6] Michael Fielding, his younger paternal half-brother, later played various characters in The Mighty Boosh TV show and live stage shows as well as Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy. His father Ray Fielding and his stepmother appeared in The Mighty Boosh TV show, with his father having several cameos as Chris de Burgh.[7] At the age of 13[8][9] Fielding began writing comedy sketches.[8] At the age of 15, Fielding became a goth and had goth girlfriends. At this time he first tried using makeup and said he loved being dressed up by his girlfriends.[10] Whilst studying at Croydon Art College[3][11] Fielding met Mighty Boosh collaborator Dave Brown.[3] From 1992 to 1995 Fielding studied for a BA in graphic design and advertising at Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education in High Wycombe,[12][13][11] graduating in 1995.[12] Whilst at Buckinghamshire College both Dave Brown and Nigel Coan were studying the same course as Fielding[14] and all three shared a student house together.[14] Nigel Coan also collaborated with Fielding on the Mighty Boosh.[14] After they had lived together in student housing whilst at Buckinghamshire College, Fielding, Brown, and Coan also later lived together in a flat in Hackney, London.[15] CareerStand-up comedy Fielding began performing comedy while at university[8] and he began performing stand up when he graduated in 1995.[15] 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.[16] Barratt had had more experience in performing than Fielding.[17] 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."[18]  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.[16] 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.[19] They also shared common interests in comedy, including Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.[20][16] 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.[21] 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.[14][22] 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.[23] The Mighty Boosh Barratt and Fielding said that they performed together for the first time in Stuart Lee's show, Moby Dick and King Dong (at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 1997), in which Barratt played King Dong's penis.[24] Sometime around 1998[24] 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 (1999) and Autoboosh (2000).[24] 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".[25] 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.[24] Fielding and Barratt said that they used to put potted plants 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".[24] 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.[26][27] From August 2008 to January 2009 they went on tour for a second time with a new stage show of the Mighty Boosh.[28]   In 2001 The Mighty Boosh became a six-part radio show on BBC London Live, later transferring to BBC Radio 4.[29][24] 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 flat, and the third in a secondhand shop in Dalston called Nabootique.[26][30] 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".[16] The style of humour in the Mighty Boosh is often described as being surreal,[31][32][16][33][18] as well as being escapist[31][16] and new wave comedy.[32] 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".[16] 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.[34] Fielding formed "Secret Peter Productions"[35] 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.[14] Coan also directed Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy as well as helping to write it along with Fielding.[14] Dave Brown also contributed to graphics for the Mighty Boosh.[12] Barratt composed all the music.[36][16] Other regular Boosh collaborators included Michael Fielding, Rich Fulcher, Dave Brown,[14] Richard Ayoade, and Matt Berry[24] The Mighty Boosh won the Shockwaves NME Best TV Award three times in 2007, 2008, and 2010.[37] In 2006 Fielding and Barratt went on tour with a new theatre show The Mighty Boosh Live.[29][38] 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, 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".[25] Fielding has said several times that he talked about writing a film with Barratt,[39] and he would have loved to do so, but they never got around to it.[38][28] 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".[28] Other television appearances At Bill Bailey's request, Fielding stood in as a team captain for three episodes during series 21 of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He also achieved a record for the highest team score ever on the show. When Bailey returned, presenter Simon Amstell made various jokes about Fielding's departure. In 2009, Bailey left the show and Fielding became one of the regular team captains.[citation needed] Between 2006 and 2017 Fielding appeared thirteen times on the quiz show The Big Fat Quiz of the Year[40][41] as well as its spin-off shows The Big Fat Anniversary Quiz, The Big Fat Quiz of the Decade[42] and the The Big Fat Quiz of Everything. He appeared on the quiz show three times with Russell Brand,[43][44][45] nine times with Richard Ayoade[46] and once with Eddie Izzard.[47] 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.[48]  Fielding produced his first solo series for Channel 4 network's E4 channel in 2011,[49] as the broadcaster invested an additional £5 million in its comedy budget following the cancellation of reality show Big Brother.[50] 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."[49][51] 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.[52]  Also in 2011, Fielding performed Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" dance routine for Series 3 of Let's Dance for Comic Relief, and reached the grand final.[53][54] 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.[55] In March 2017, it was revealed that Fielding would co-host the upcoming series of The Great British Bake Off alongside Sandi Toksvig.[56] 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.[57][58] In January 2018, he was a panellist on QI alongside Russell Brand and Aisling Bea.[59] In 2024, Fielding played Dick Turpin in an Apple TV+ comedy series, The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin.[60][61] 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.[62] Radio In November 2007, Fielding starred in five episodes of BBC Radio 2 show Vic Reeves' House Arrest as a local vagrant who knocks on Reeves' door once a week to ask for work.[65] MusicFielding has appeared in several music videos, including Mint Royale's "Blue Song", alongside Julian Barratt, Nick Frost and Michael Smiley. The video was directed by Edgar Wright and served as the inspiration for the opening sequence of his film Baby Driver (2017).[66] He also made a brief appearance in the video for Razorlight's "In the Morning". He appeared in music videos for the Robots in Disguise songs "Girl" (alongside Chris Corner who was, at the time, boyfriend to Sue Denim), "The Tears", and "Turn It Up". In 2009, Noel was involved in the Kasabian video "Vlad the Impaler", in which he plays the titular character,[67] and reprised the role at the 2014 Glastonbury Festival.[68] 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.[69] 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.[70] Fielding paired up with Sergio Pizzorno (Kasabian) to form a band, Loose Tapestries, formed to provide music for Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy.[71][72][35] Loose Tapestries released two albums and a Christmas single.[73][74] ArtBoosh has exhibited his paintings in London.[75][11][3] He held his first exhibition of his paintings, entitled Psychedelic Dreams of the Jelly Fox,[11] in a gallery above the patisserie Maison Bertaux,[76][11] in Greek Street, Soho in December 2007.[11] There Fielding listed some of his inspirations as Henri Rousseau, René Magritte, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Dexter Dalwood, a former tutor of his from the Croydon School of Art[76] and Fielding has also cited Salvador Dalí as an inspiration.[76] A second exhibition of his paintings entitled Bryan Ferry vs the Jelly Fox also took place at Maison Bertaux, from 5 July 2010 through to 5 January 2011.[76][77] In October 2011, Fielding released an art book called Scribblings of a Madcap Shambleton, which he produced along with The Mighty Boosh cast member Dave Brown. It features many of his old and new paintings, drawings and photography.[78] Fielding's video installation of The Jelly Fox was shown at the Saatchi Gallery, and in 2012 he created a unique piece inspired by The Beatles for Liverpool Love at the Museum of Liverpool. In March 2015, his exhibition He Wore Dreams Around Unkind Faces was shown at the Royal Albert Hall.[79] In January 2021, the luxury fashion house Fendi unveiled a collection featuring abstract takes on the brand's logo, created by Fielding.[80] Recognition and honoursOn 6 September 2011, Fielding received an honorary master's degree from his alma mater, now called Buckinghamshire New University, for his ongoing interest in the graphics area and support for many art organisations.[12][13] In 2015, Fielding was named one of GQ magazine's 50 best-dressed British men.[81] Personal lifeFielding was formerly in a relationship with Robots in Disguise lead vocalist Dee Plume, who made minor appearances in The Mighty Boosh and in its live adaptations.[3] In 2007, it was reported that Fielding, then 33 and a close friend of Russell Brand, had been seen in nightclubs, kissing the then-16 Pixie Geldof after reportedly dating her year-older sister the year prior.[82][83] The next month, Plume ended the relationship as a result of the coverage of his relationship with the schoolgirl.[84] He began dating radio DJ Lliana Bird sometime around 2010. Their first child, a daughter named Dali (after artist Salvador Dalí), was born in 2018. They were living in the Highgate area of London at the time.[85][86] The couple's second daughter, Iggy (after Iggy Pop), was born in 2020.[87] During his time at art college, Fielding developed alcohol-induced hepatitis.[6][15] Nigel Coan, who studied the same course as Fielding at art college[14] and also shared a flat with him during this time, helped Fielding during this period.[15] Fielding was ill and exhausted for a year, and was unable to consume alcohol for five years afterwards.[10] FilmographyFilm
Television
Music videos
References
External links Wikiquote has quotations related to Noel Fielding.  Wikimedia Commons has media related to Noel Fielding.
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