Noel Fielding

Noel Fielding 'furious' to be mistaken for a girl

Noel Fielding has admitted that he was "furious" to be mistaken for a girl when he was younger. The Luxury Comedy star told The Big Issue that his slight frame and hairstyle caused the mix-up when he was a college student.

Like many, it took me a while to get into The Mighty Boosh, but now I'm one of those people that gets into tetchy arguments while defending it against charges of gross hipsterism. So as a committed fan, I was fascinated to see what Noel Fielding's solo project, Channel 4′s Luxury Comedy, would be like...

Despite my love for Noel's work with Julian Barratt, I have to say I approached his new sketch show with a little trepidation. What really grabbed me about the Boosh wasn't the surreal characters and lo-fi, hand-made visuals, it was just Noel and Julian sat on a bench bickering like an old married couple. I embraced the oddness, but it was the traditional double-act stuff that grounded the show.

From the publicity, though, Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy appeared to be 100% surreal characters and lo-fi, hand-made visuals. They were always Noel's domain - he's had several art exhibitions around London - and without his verbal sparring partner, it seemed that 'grounding the show' was about as far from his mind as observational skits about aeroplane food.

After the first episode, I was left feeling a little flat. I'd chuckled, and the show did indeed look great thanks to the fantastic hand-painted sets and costumes, but the sketches didn't seem to hang together particularly well, and I didn't feel I'd quite got a handle on what Noel was trying to achieve yet.

Thank goodness I followed my own advice and gave a new comedy series a second chance then, as the second episode was a whole lot more enjoyable. Themed around art - with appearances from Andy Warhol and discussions about whether dressing up as a 'fireman baby' is a concept or a joke - the second episode had a satisfying cohesion that was lacking from the first. Is Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy laugh out loud funny? No. Is it interesting, cleverer than it likes to make out and, most importantly, going somewhere? Looks that way...

Noel Fielding's new comedy is inescapably whimsical - if you mean by that, capricious in its inventions and logic. Part of the point of it is its zany fecundity - the fact that you simply can't predict at any moment what will crop up next. But that's also one of its weaknesses, since pretty much nothing is inadmissable. I've even heard fellow comedians get testy about the style, parodying the burbling chain of nonsense that emerges when its practitioners are on song. And it isn't that it doesn't make you laugh, more that you can't quite work out why you did once you've stopped.

Audio: Fielding on the undiluted madness of new series

Mighty Boosh star Noel Fielding has said he lost himself while filming his new series.

He told Radio 5 Live's Richard Bacon that the 54 characters he played erased his memory of who he was, but that he wanted to expose the viewer to the "undiluted madness".

Luxury Comedy has been commissioned for a second series.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy, review

The Boosh performer's latest TV effort abounds in surrealism but lacks coherence... and jokes.

Noel Fielding: 'I've not ditched The Mighty Boosh'

Comedian says he wants to make film with co-star Julian Barratt.

Noel Fielding: The new face of surrealism

Noel Fielding's new solo show may be the most surreal thing ever seen on TV. He reveals all to his old friend and ShortList columnist Danny Wallace...

Noel Fielding's new sketch show has been publicised widely - there's not a bus shelter in my hometown of Stockton without a poster of Fielding in some bizarre costume.

When you watch the show it gets even weirder. Fielding is living in a treehouse in a jungle, with an aardvark butler (played by Noel's brother Michael) and with Andy Warhol (Tom Meeten) as his cleaner. Then there are other characters played by Fielding, including a New York cop with a talking knife wound, a lion in a zoo going slowly insane, and a games teacher with shell shock - who is also a chocolate finger.

Normally I like it when comedians push at the extremes, whether it's in terms of language, situation or realism/surrealism. However, Luxury Comedy appears to be one of those rather rare cases of going too far instead of not far enough. His earlier work, The Mighty Boosh, was itself bizarre and wonderfully funny, but also had the added advantage of Julian Barratt keeping things in control and from going too off the wall. This show is just bizarre, though - all surrealism and seemingly without comedy.

For me the best bit was seemingly the sanest, which was Fielding's drawing of Pele holding a china cup and kicking what was either a ball or the saucer for the cup. I think it worked because at least you can connect the show with something that exists in the real world. The same is true with the 'Warhol' character.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy is too far disconnected from anything recognisable to make it funny. A good piece of art perhaps - totally maverick - but that's about it.

Number of members of interminably crap indie band Kasabian who contribute to the music: 1

Number of references to eating rainbows: 1

Number of references to eating rainbows that make you want to punch your television: 1

Number of former Mighty Boosh employees involved: 4

Number of cheese tanks: 1

Number of cheese tanks that make you want to travel back in time and kill Salvador Dali: 1

Number of people who sat blank-faced at the television while it was on: 422,000

Number of blinding on-screen colours: 3,455

Number of drug-dealing flies called Figo: 1

Number of drug-dealing flies called Figo that make you want to go and nail-bomb the whole of Camden: 1

Number of jokes: 0

Number of people called Julian Barrett who appear to have carried Noel Fielding up to this point in his career: 1