Boosh-whacked

Come with us now as Will Dean takes you on a journey through time and space with Noel Fielding, co-creator of The Mighty Boosh

By Will Dean

Remember being a kid, when all you needed was your imagination and your Nan’s pots and pans to have a good time. Well that’s not a million miles away from the minds of Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, co-creators of the absurdly brilliant stage, radio and TV Show, The Mighty Boosh.

Without a huge budget, or the promotion given to many other comedy shows, Barratt and Fielding have created an alternate world (a Zooniverse if you will) that takes you with it, be you young, youngish or very young.

“We have kids, aged like seven and eight who come to our show and absolutely love it, their parents come up to us and say ‘it’s their favourite thing in the world’. I remember when I was a kid I really liked freaky shows like Monkey Magic,” says Fielding, AKA Camden fashion pirate Vince Noir.

After performing, one way or another, for over a decade and two cult series on BBCs Two and Three, the Boosh are finally making the giant leap up to arena shows. Does this mean Fielding and Barratt (who you may remember as Dan Ashcroft in Nathan Barley) are as famous as their characters wish they were in the show? “Yeah, we had paparazzi outside our bus today. I didn’t even know they reached Bournemouth. I looked like I’d just climbed out of a grave.”

Before the Boosh embarked on a huge tour, Fielding moonlighted in Graham Lineham’s The IT Crowd as a depressive goth. “It was quite different to what I usually do. I’ve got a definite goth streak ‚Äì I’m not embarrassed to say. I’m bringing the goth back in a cool way. I enjoyed the goth in The IT Crowd because he was a bit more Marilyn Manson and a bit more freaky, he was horrible,” he giggles.

Most of his IT Crowd screen-time was spent with one of Fielding’s old pals – one Chris Morris. In it he presented Morris’s widowed screen mother a Cradle of Filth CD as a funeral gift. “Me and Chris were pissing ourselves. That old lady was great. I think if he (Lineham) does any more he’s going to get the character in a bit more.”

Back in the madcap world of the Boosh, Fielding, more often than not, looks like he is on the brink of a laughing fit. Does he struggle holding his chuckles back on stage? “I find the whole thing quite ridiculous. I find acting quite ridiculous. I get the giggles a lot so I’m often trying not to laugh ‚Äì that’s my style now.”

So, Vince is a fairly bubbly and placid chap. Is there anything that makes his also seemingly-calm alter-ego mad with rage? Fielding thinks for a few seconds before bursting out with something he’s obviously ranted about before. “Bands that are rubbish. Keane make me angry. Coldplay make me angry. I don’t like watery stuff. I’m quite extreme as a person, so I don’t like the mediocre. I like stuff with a bit of fire.”

You might be able to tell that from his shows. The Mighty Boosh features Noel dressing as a mad Brazillian drummer with eight willies called Spider (“My favourite character ‚Äì he’s based on my uncle”), Howard (Barratt’s character) getting mistakenly sent to monkey hell instead of Vince’s gorilla pal Bollo, and more madness than Suggs in a loony bin.

Do they ever dismiss things for being a bit too silly? “We don’t really censor ourselves in that way.

“But a lot of people go (he puts on a silly voice): ”’It’s craaazy! You must be on drugs!’ And you just think, ‘Is it that bland, the world, that our show is drug inducing?’”

Maybe it is, but at least the incomparable Boosh are there to save us from blandness.

The Mighty Boosh play the CIA on April 14 (029 2022 4488). Series two is now available on DVD. www.themightyboosh.com