Noel Fielding plays the same figure in most things: the pretty, unbothered one who wanders through the chaos as though it had been arranged to match his outfit. Beside Julian Barratt it is properly funny. On his own it can drift.
Fi1m perspective
Vince Noir arrives with his hair already done. In The Mighty Boosh (2004) Fielding plays the flamboyant one, the mod cut and the casual confidence, and the trick is that he never seems to be trying. Julian Barratt's Howard Moon sweats over every inch of his dignity while Vince coasts past, and the coasting is the joke. It is a light performance that needs a heavier one beside it. Most of Fielding's characters have been built that way, dandies set against straighter partners, and the pairing does a great deal of the work.
The partnership came first. Fielding started in stand-up after art school in 1995, met Barratt in 1997, and the two of them built the Boosh on stage at Edinburgh between 1998 and 2000, then on radio in 2001, then across three BBC Three series from 2004 to 2007. After that the career splits. There was Richmond in The IT Crowd (2006–2013), a recurring part in a mainstream sitcom. There was Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy (2012–2014), his own show, made in his own image. Then a team captain's chair on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the co-presenter's job on The Great British Bake Off from 2017, and in 2024 The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, which he starred in and co-wrote.
The art school shows. Fielding brings animation, costume and psychedelic colour to everything, working with the animator Nigel Coan and with Dave Brown as performer and visual collaborator, and the Boosh looks like nothing else made for that budget of attention. Michael Fielding's Naboo is a small, dry pleasure in the middle of it; his restraint is welcome among the louder turns. Watching it again, we noticed that our laughter kept landing on Barratt and our eye kept landing on Fielding, and that is roughly how the thing is built: one man makes the effort, the other makes it look effortless, and you need both in the frame.
What does not work is the same in the ensemble and in the solo shows. The Boosh writing, credited to Barratt, Fielding and Richard Ayoade, gives a weak idea the same patient attention as a good one, and some jokes stay on after the laughing has stopped. Luxury Comedy took that habit and removed the straight man, and it has been called self-indulgent and short of actual jokes. We have not reviewed it and will not pretend to a settled view, but Fielding's own account of it is telling: "It's really specific, it's much more surreal and weird... if Salvador Dali had made it." Specific is not the same as funny.
The recommendation is the Boosh, with Barratt beside him. The caveat is that Fielding alone is a taste we have not acquired, and we suspect he knows it: nearly every job he has taken since comes with company.
Biography
Noel Fielding is an English comedian, actor and writer. He is best known for co-creating, co-writing and starring as Vince Noir in the BBC Three series The Mighty Boosh (2004–2007), alongside Julian Barratt.
Fielding has appeared in The IT Crowd (2006) as Richmond and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004). He won series 4 of Taskmaster (2017) and has served as a team captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Since 2017 he has co-presented The Great British Bake Off. In 2024 he starred in the Apple TV+ series The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin.
