Noel Fielding may be a natural-born jester but there is one subject about which he is perfectly serious: his madcap fashion sense. “The way we dress in this country has gone really conservative,” says the google-eyed half of psychedelic Brit-com duo The Mighty Boosh, from his hotel in Brighton.
“When I grew up in the ‘70s men wore these amazing outfits. You had icons like Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie. Men were allowed to be dandies. One of the things I’m most proud of with The Boosh is my wearing these ridiculous costumes. I’ve met kids who are taking my look and putting their own twist on it. I feel very good about that. I’m trying to bring back a little glamour.”

He says this with a giggle. Fielding, you quickly discover, giggles quite a lot. His sentences are punctuated by laughter that might almost be described as girlish, were it not emanating from a pallid beanpole who looks like he’s wandered off the set of a Tim Burton movie. The more excited he becomes the louder the giggles. When, for instance, I ask him about the recent to-do over Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’ bawdy call to septuagenarian Andrew Sachs he practically convulses with chortles.
“Jonathan and Russell are both really talented,” he says. “I guess at the end of the day if the broadcast wasn’t live, someone should have stopped it going out. I don’t really understand how something like that could happen. Surely it’s not just those two in the studio? It’s hard enough being funny, let alone making decisions as to what should air and what shouldn’t. That’s somebody else’s job, really. Often in comedy, it’s about the speed. Sometimes you go down the wrong path and find yourself thinking, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have said that’...”
Did he join the rest of middle-class Britain in their outrage over ‘Wossie’ and Brand’s hi-jinks?
“Well, Russell is quite risky. He’s always walking that line isn’t he? The interesting thing is that, at the time, only one or two people complained. It was only after the press got hold of it that everyone else joined in – ‘Oh, that’s an outrage’.”
You can’t help wondering whether all of the vitriol directed at Ross owes more to his ridiculously fat BBC contract, which he’s bragged about to journalists in the past. Are we witnessing a case of media schadenfreude perhaps?
“It doesn’t really endear you to anyone, does it, when you’re on two million quid a year,” says Fielding. “The thing is, you had to have heard it [the Sachs phone-call] in context. For instance, I didn’t know that Sachs was supposed to have been on the show. That’s why they were calling him up. They didn’t just think ‘I know, let’s make a tasteless phone-call’. It’s also absurd, that, in the month when we’re about to have the first black President in the United States, everyone’s going on about Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. It’s surreal.”
Full disclosure: Fielding and Brand are good friends, often to be seen knocking around together in the hipper corners of north London.
“He’s a really lovely bloke,” Fielding insists. “The thing with Russell is that he gets so excited. The whole point of his act is that he says things that are really near the mark. It’s the same with Jonathan – it’s all about thinking on your feet. It’s a dance and sometimes you slip over. But I’ll defend them to the end.”
Nobody, it’s safe to say, is likely to flood the British airwaves with complaints about The Mighty Boosh. Cuddlier than a basket of kittens, this madcap duo (they hate to be called surreal, though it’s hard to think of a more appropriate adjective) channel Flann O’Brien, ‘70s Doctor Who and zany kids television – a sweetly deranged formula that has brought them enormous success/. They’ve three hit BBC series under the name, a slew of best-selling DVDs and the sort of live fan base you associate with big-league rock bands (and not just in the UK – ‘The Boosh’ are almost as adored here).
“Our new show is much bigger,” enthuses Fielding, of their current jaunt around the UK. “We’re doing places like Wembley Arena. You gotta’ tailor it to the venue or stuff gets lost. We have pack projections, live bands – the first half is quite cabaret, the second half has a story.”
Were they hurt by the rather cruel reviews the tour received when it made its British debut over the summer, the gist being the duo were coasting on the goodwill of their fan-base (“When your audience laugh whether you are funny or not, writing jokes might start to seem an unnecessary chore,” scoffed one writer).
“It takes time to break a show in,” says Fielding (another giggle). “It needs 10 or 20 gigs on the road to bed down. The media comes on the first night – not everything works, the crew don’t really know the show yet. If they came ten gigs in, when everything had settled down it would be different. You know what the press are like – we’ve always been a cult thing, but now we’ve got the people but not the press on our side. If it’s not something they’re telling you about, the press will say ‘Well, it’s not as good as when you used to be playing to only seven people.’”
Fielding is long a fan of Irish comedy. Indeed, he seems on first name terms with most of the country’s pre-eminent comics. He was, he says, delighted to see David O’Doherty win a prestigious award at Edinburgh this year.
“He’s brilliant. I’ve been a fan of his for years. He’s been working hard at it for a while. His stuff is very thoughtful.”
Why do Irish stand-ups fare so well in Britain?
“It’s something to do with the cadence, the delivery – it’s very natural and easy to listen to. It works particularly well for stand-up. Then you’ve got the literary side to it – that tradition of whimsy, coming from people like Flann O’Brien. You guys are alright – you know what you’re doing.”
For Fielding and Mighty Boosh partner Julian Barratt, 2009 is shaping up to be a bit of a roller-coaster. They’ve another tour to get under their belts (including a whopper January date at The O2 in Dublin). They’re also considering venturing to the United States, though the recent failure of Little Britain USA has left them in no doubt that they have their work cut out.
“It’s hard to penetrate America,” Fielding reflects. “Often people go out there who you imagine would do very well – you’d think, ‘Well Robbie Williams is going to do well; he could play Vegas’. And it doesn’t happen. Oasis didn’t do particularly well and you would have thought they might. They’re like The Beatles, and they’re very English but in a way Americans can comprehend. It’s very strange. Flight Of The Conchords – who are of course from New Zealand, anyway – they did well. However, they almost deliberately tried to fly under the radar – they hit a younger audience and went on HBO, which is a bit cool. If we went there, then we’d try the same kind of thing. It would have to be marketed quite well though.”
Fielding has to go in a minute but there’s time for one last question: it was reported recently that he’s performed on stage in a dress bequeathed unto him by Courtney Love. Care to elaborate?
“Well, it was a t-shirt, actually. And I’ve gone and lost it,” he sighs. “She’d been given it by Helena Christensen. But then I misplaced it in my dressing-room and now the story is all over the internet. The t-shirt’s become this thing from the Holy Grail or something. Courtney is a friend of mine, so if you think about it – it’s not that surprising I’d have one of her t-shirts. She’s probably got loads of mine.”

The Mighty Boosh play The O2, Dublin on January 5