Noel Fielding (; born 21 May 1973) is an English comedian, actor, writer, television personality, and artist. Known for his dark and surreal comedic style, he gained prominence in the late 1990s as a member of the comedy troupe The Mighty Boosh.
Fielding began performing stand-up comedy when he graduated from art school in 1995, and 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. In 1998, they performed their first comedy show together, and then later 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 television show generated a cult following and earned them a variety of awards.
Fielding played the role of Richmond in the Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd (2006–2013) and wrote and starred in his own Channel 4 comedy show Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy (2012–2014). He appeared as a team captain on the BBC Two panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks (2009–2015; 2021–2025). Since 2017, Fielding co-presents the Channel 4 baking competition show The Great British Bake Off. In 2024, he played Dick Turpin in the Apple TV+ comedy series The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. Aside from his comedy and television career, Fielding has worked as a visual artist, exhibiting his artwork internationally. He has also occasionally worked as a musician, most notably as member of the band Loose Tapestries.
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Early life and education
Fielding was born in the Westminster area of London in 1973, the son of Royal Mail manager Ray Fielding and Yvonne Fagan and he grew up in Mitcham, Southwest London.
He is of French descent through his father who Fielding has described as being "basically French" and when Fielding was three years old, his father remarried and Fielding was mostly raised by his paternal grandmother.
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. Fielding has commented that, "My parents had lots of parties... They were hopelessly bohemian."
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.
When Fielding was around 6 or 7, he was at a Kiss concert, wearing a Kiss costume and he was taken to the backstage dressing room of Kiss so that Gene Simmons could be shown his costume. At the age of 13, Fielding began writing comedy sketches. At the age of 15, Fielding became a goth and had goth girlfriends and at this time he first tried using makeup and said he loved being dressed up by his girlfriends.
Whilst studying at Croydon Art College, Fielding met Mighty Boosh collaborator Dave Brown. From 1992 to 1995, Fielding studied for a BA in graphic design and advertising at Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education in High Wycombe, graduating in 1995.
Whilst at Buckinghamshire College, both Dave Brown and Nigel Coan were studying the same course as Fielding and in their second and third year of university all three lived in a student flat together. Nigel Coan also collaborated with Fielding on the Mighty Boosh. After they had lived together in student housing, Fielding, Brown, and Coan also later lived together in a flat in Hackney, London.
Career
Stand-up comedy
Fielding began performing comedy while at university and he began performing stand up when he graduated in 1995.
He first met Mighty Boosh collaborator Julian Barratt when he attended one of Barratt's solo stand-up gig's at the Hellfire comedy club and Fielding approached Barratt after his gig had finished. 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". 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. They shared an interest in music, with Fielding more into rock and roll and pop, and Barratt preferring jazz, but both enjoyed electro and both had played in bands before meeting. They also shared common interests in comedy, including Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.
After Fielding performed at the final of The Daily Telegraph open mic award at the Edinburgh comedy festival, he was signed to Avalon talent agency and through Avalon began performing on the same comedy bills as Barratt. During this period, Fielding and Barratt were performing stand-up at the same gigs together and they realised they liked each other's stuff and began writing and doing gigs together as a duo.
In 2002, Fielding performed his solo show Voodoo Hedgehog at the Edinburgh festival and it included the characters "The Moon" and the "The Jelly Fox" that later appeared in the Mighty Boosh TV series and it received a Perrier award nomination. In 2010, Fielding was going to perform a solo tour across the country and then it was cancelled with Fielding announcing via Twitter that he was too busy to do the tour as he wanted to concentrate on writing The Mighty Boosh film with Julian Barratt as well as creating a new album. In 2012, he toured Sydney and Melbourne performing a solo stand-up show as well as hosting a stand-up comedy gala as a part of the Just For Laughs festival held in Sydney.
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 show.
The Mighty Boosh
Barratt and Fielding performed together for the first time in Stewart Lee's show, Moby Dick and King Dong (at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 1997), in which Barratt played King Dong's penis.
Sometime around 1998, 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). 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". 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. 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". 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.
In 2001, The Mighty Boosh became a six-part radio show on BBC London Live, later transferring to BBC Radio 4.
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. 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". The style of humour in the Mighty Boosh is often described as being surreal, as well as being escapist and new wave comedy. 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".
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.
Other television appearances
At Bill Bailey's request, Fielding stood in as a team captain for three episodes of Never Mind the Buzzcocks during series 21 in 2007 and when Bailey returned as team captain, presenter Simon Amstell made various jokes about Fielding's departure. Fielding also achieved a record for the highest team score ever on the show and in 2009, Bailey left the show and Fielding became one of the regular team captains.
In The IT Crowd, Fielding plays Richmond, a former executive who used to report to Denholm, the director of the company that he and the other main characters Maurice, Roy and Jen work for, but after he discovered black metal band Cradle of Filth he changed his appearance at work to that of a goth and began living in the IT department server room.
Between 2006 and 2019 Fielding appeared thirteen times on the quiz show The Big Fat Quiz of the Year as well as its spin-off shows The Big Fat Anniversary Quiz, The Big Fat Quiz of the Decade and The Big Fat Quiz of Everything. He appeared on the quiz show three times with Russell Brand, nine times with Richard Ayoade and once with Eddie Izzard.
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.
Fielding produced his first solo series for Channel 4 network's E4 channel in 2011, as the broadcaster invested an additional £5 million in its comedy budget following the cancellation of reality show Big Brother. 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." 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.
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.
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.
Music
In late 1999 Fielding's melding of comedy and music led to him collaborating with Midfield General on the song "Midfielding", in which Noel delivers a surrealist monologue about native British mammals traveling to Africa to "kick some butt".
Fielding 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). 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, and reprised the role at the 2014 Glastonbury Festival.
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. 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.
Fielding paired up with Sergio Pizzorno (Kasabian) to form a band, Loose Tapestries, formed to provide music for Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy. Loose Tapestries released two albums and a Christmas single.
Art
Fielding has exhibited his paintings in London. He held his first exhibition of his paintings, entitled Psychedelic Dreams of the Jelly Fox, in a gallery above the patisserie Maison Bertaux, in Greek Street, Soho in December 2007. 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 and Fielding has also cited Salvador Dalí as an inspiration. 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.
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.
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.
In January 2021, the luxury fashion house Fendi unveiled a collection featuring abstract takes on the brand's logo, created by Fielding.
On 18 November 2025, British rock band Pink Floyd released a newly mixed version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I–IX) along with an official YouTube video featuring a time-lapse painting by Fielding inspired by founding Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett.
Recognition and honours
On 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.
In 2015, Fielding was named one of GQ magazine's 50 best-dressed British men.
Personal life
Fielding 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.
He began going out with radio DJ Lliana Bird sometime around 2010, and they have two children.
In relation to his sexuality it was once commented to Fielding, whilst being interviewed by Alan Carr on Alan Carr: Chatty Man, "Now I've heard you kissed a man once..." with Fielding replying "...actually you know I'm not, I'm not sort of, I'm not really against, I will get off with a man, if I'm drunk, just not sure... I don't mind a feel up, just not sure I want to, you know [he then uses hand gestures to imitate anal sex]...", with Carr responding "That's fair enough, that's fair...". Fielding described himself as gender fluid in a 2024 interview, saying "I’m always interested in clothes and makeup and I’ve always been quite gender-fluid".
During his time at art college, Fielding developed what was suspected to be the virus hepatitis A although it was later confirmed to be glandular fever. Nigel Coan, who studied the same course as Fielding at art college and also shared a flat with him during this time, helped Fielding during this period. Fielding was ill and exhausted for a year.
His paternal half-brother is Michael Fielding.
