Noel Fielding Quotes
Comedian
I hate my feet. I don't like my hands, either: they're like lions' paws. When I was in the Boosh, in a catsuit and gold heels, I was constantly thinking, 'I hate the way I look.' I should have just enjoyed myself, because that was as good as it was going to get.
If my dinner was really hot, I'd put my fork up to my eye and look at my little brother through the steam coming off the food. He'd say: 'Mum, he's looking at me through his fork again.' It sent him insane.
When I was a really young child, I felt like I could see fairies. I was convinced there were fairies in my grandmother's garden.
I believe in fate. I didn't set out to be a comedian at first. I'm still not sure if I am or not.
There's a little pond near my house, and I see two swans there all the time who are obviously in love. But they look like the same bird, so I don't know if they're male or female, but they're definitely in love.
I hate recycling. I don't think it exists. I think they've made it up to give people jobs. They deliver these stupid little Tupperware boxes and tell me, 'You're not using your recycling box!' Who are they? They're not the police.
Fame is a bit Nietzschean. For everything good, something bad happens to you, so you have to sort of be careful.
Gay people are all like Superman. You have to be quite strong to be gay - or to be different in any way. You build special muscles.
I just like magical, fantastical stuff. I don't really see it as surreal when I'm writing. It's just, I write, and then I have an idea, and usually, they're quite odd.
Reality depresses me. I need to find fantasy worlds and escape in them.
My first gigs were at university: I'd dress up as Jesus, jump off a cross and dance to a Mick Jagger song. I don't know if it was funny or not, but it was a start.
Fantasy Man's my favourite, I think, because he's sort of like Don Quixote. He lives in a fantasy world, but he gets jolted back into reality, and I guess that's me, really!
I like how food can look incredible more than I like eating it. I started moving food around the plate to make it appear I'd eaten more but then enjoyed making faces on the plate - peas for eyebrows, Yorkshire puddings for eyes.
I think I'm constantly surprised that adults can't deal with illogical things or thing that are weird or psychedelic. I've never really lost that.
Fame is like being at a party and getting invited into the cool room even the VIPs can't get into, then the even cooler, more exclusive room after that. Eventually, you end up in a cubicle on your own, asking, 'Am I having fun?'
The best stuff comes out when you're not making it for anything and you don't really know what you're making.
When I was 14, I had a job in a cake shop. I got caught by the boss, lying down eating cake, and was sacked on my first day.
My mum and dad are quite hippyish, so I'm pretty naive. I take everyone at face value.
When you're famous, you can't go to Topshop. Even when I disguise myself in a moustache, baseball cap, sunglasses - the full Madonna kit - it doesn't work: my stupid face is too big.
I started writing sketches when I was 13. I liked Vic Reeves, Fry and Laurie, and Paul Merton, and I thought you could just send sketches to the BBC, and they'd go, 'Great. We'll put these on telly.' But I gradually realised that you either had to go to university and join a club, or do standup.
Over the years, I've trained my hair to do what I say, and it's usually well behaved. I often reward my hair with special treats when it pleases me.
I was quite a shy kid, but I was quite funny at school, and I was really into art. In our class, there were two of us who were good at drawing, and my teacher was like, 'He's going to make a wonderful artist one day, and Noel can make everyone laugh.'
The film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky - his films are hard to watch - they're so dense and rich - but they're probably the best things ever made. And Spike Milligan, who was light years ahead of the rest - I played some of his stuff to Jack Black once. He'd never heard of him, so watching him listen to Spike for the first time was just hilarious.
I played football for a long time when I was a kid, and then I went to art college and turned my back on it. Because of that, my toes are mangled; they've been broken. They're like hooves or talons. They're disgusting. I'd never get them out.
I always had a sort of niggling regret that we didn't come do stuff in America.
When I was at art college, a can of Spray Mount adhesive cost £12: £2 more than my weekly food bill.
When I was 11, I was with my cousin in a scrapyard; there were three trains on top of each other, and we climbed up to the top. It was really high, and I nearly fell off, but my cousin grabbed the back of my shirt.
You can't please all of the people all of the time; you can only please some of the people some of the time.
I was in a band with a boy who was quite androgynous and a bit bisexual, and we used to play up to that a little bit to be provocative in a theatrical way, but I guess you either are or aren't.
I can't write unless I've got the voice for a character.
When you're a kid, and someone's an artist, you think of Leonardo da Vinci. You don't think that's a job; you just think of a man with a beard, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
When people come to see you, they know what you do. That's what they want. They want it to be quite English; they don't want to watch an English bloke trying to fit in. They want it to be quintessentially English in the way that Ricky Gervais is rude to people at the Golden Globes.
I've got a beautiful kitchen, which looks like a '60s version of space, with silver chrome, orange glass work surfaces, and brown leather, and it's entirely visual and has little function. I've hardly got any knives, and there's only one wooden spoon and one saucepan. But I think I've got a cheese grater, so that's good.
I used to wear this cowboy outfit. I wouldn't take off. It was ridiculous. My mum was like, 'You've got to take that off sometime,' and I was like, 'No way, this is it.' It was the '70s - it was turquoise and yellow, really psychedelic colors. I wanted to be a psychedelic cowboy.
The combination of us two was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You meet someone, and you just work, you have chemistry on stage, and writing.
I start getting bored and misbehaving if I don't work hard. It's fine when you're younger - you go out a lot and muck around with your mates and drink and stuff - but I'm a bit over that now.
My friends who have kids look like they haven't been to bed for a year.
I've got quite a strong drive, and that can be slightly deplorable. Struggling to become a famous comedian - there's something weird about that.
I've always had a good imagination. If I saw a sitcom, and everything was made out of cheese, I wouldn't go 'What?' I wouldn't get angry. I'd think, 'Right, OK, all cheese? Amazing.'
You go to all these parties and meet all these crazy people. But ultimately, it just ends up with you in a club, and then you're in the VIP area of the club, and then you're in the special secret VIP bit, and then eventually, it's just you, on your own, in a VIP box, going, 'Is this fun? I'm not sure this is fun.'
It is scary playing someone you know. You don't want to let him down.
I'll be seen as eccentric, like Vic Reeves or Spike Milligan, which would be amazing. But I suppose I'm in this weird transitional period between having some success doing weird stuff and not being eccentric yet. I'm in limbo.
People like to put you a box. I've always been the wrong shape. Maybe you are, too. I think all the people who are wrong shapes for boxes should go out and march into the streets singing, 'We are the shapes! We don't fit the box.'
I think the more you party and the more you get drunk, the more your soul starts to evaporate, and eventually, you're just a husk. So you have to go to the gym and build your soul up again.
People keep asking me if the Boosh is coming back, and I say, 'I hope so.' I'm not bothered people ask me about it. TV's become quite disposable, so to make something that lasts a bit of time - it won't last forever - is quite nice.
I've been writing the show with Nigel Coan, the director of 'Luxury Comedy', and Tom Meeten. Three's good. With two, you can lock horns a bit. On your own, you're not sure whether what you've made is any good. I don't know how people write novels. I would go mad.
I love David Suchet. I'm obsessed with Poirot. Then I saw him in 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' where he did Lady Bracknell, and he was amazing - he did it like a dinosaur, like a velociraptor.
You're still young. Don't panic. It's hard to know what you should be doing in your 20s. Try different things, have some fun, and see what happens.
In television, there are so many things between you making a joke and the audience seeing it. It's like an assault course.
For the second series of 'Luxury Comedy', I tried to drop the 'Noel Fielding' from it. I thought that would make it less like a solo project and more like a show. Also, it would probably have been easier to take the reaction to the first series if it had been a project rather than my name and face!
I still feel about 22. I don't understand, actually. I mean, as I got older, I thought there would be things like, 'I need a house now', 'I need kids', 'I need a licence to drive', but I have never really had that happen. I guess that forms part of my appeal for the people who like the stuff I do: I'm not a real person - I'm a gypsy.
Kids love Lady Gaga because she's a freak, and she's one of the few people doing that, but unfortunately, Lady Gaga hasn't got the tunes. She's not David Bowie or Roxy Music.
A Boosh fan bought me an original copy of 'The Jungle Book' - like, the first print from 1894 - so I've just started re-reading that and am really enjoying it. But the last book I read in its entirety was 'Willard and his Bowling Trophies,' by Richard Brautigan, which is amazing.
I've never been to Hawaii. It looks amazing.
When you're 14 and you're with your friends, you laugh about really stupid stuff, but as you get older, the laughter inside you dies. When you're older, you need a bit of help.
I actually went to Wimbledon, and David Attenborough was sat in the row in front of me, and I thought that was quite amazing. That's insane, isn't it? He's, like, a proper person.
I loved being a man-woman. It's much more interesting than being one or the other.
The Monkees? I heard that they were quite into their party scene at one point.
I make an all right Bowie. Actually, I look more like Cilla Black with that wig.
I bought two sculptures of two baboons called Lord and Lady Muck on an antique piece of furniture from an art exhibition, and it was quite expensive. It was very expensive, actually - way too expensive.
The Goons were always one of our favourites; we always felt we were in that tradition - Goons, Monty Python, Peter Cook, Vic and Bob, Spike Milligan. We felt we were part of that lineage, but in England, it wasn't happening like that. There was a brand of comedy like 'The Office,' which was very real.
I get more work when I'm thinner. I was playing Alice Cooper, and I had to lose a stone, so I wasn't eating sugar. You can't just get straight back onto sugar, as it's quite a powerful thing.
The trouble is, the older you get, it's hard to find time to make a film: it's a year to write, a year to get money, a year to make it, a year to edit. It's four years of your life.
When we went to America, Robin Williams came to the gig, and Mike Myers had lunch with us and wanted to write a film for us. We're idiots - we turned it down. I think we were just sick of each other at that point. When you get famous, it takes some time to realise it isn't going to be good.
Kids feel like they can approach me, which is nice. I've created this character who's like a child-man.
I like to warm them up with stand-up, get them into my world and tone, and then bring other characters on. There's so much you can do theatrically on stage. You keep changing the direction and angles, and then people don't get bored.
Comedians are ridiculously oversensitive, so, especially with the Internet, you feel everything, like a spider on a web going, 'Oh God, I'm getting stomped'.
I love the Marx Brothers.
I'm involved with this exhibition, which is a collection of Nobby Clarke's photos of the opening night of my own art exhibition.
I just like to build. Don't get me wrong: I think stand-up is great, and when someone like Richard Pryor or Steve Martin does stand-up, there's nothing better in the world. But I don't want to watch a lot of stand-ups for two hours. So I can do 45 minutes of stand-up and then say, 'Can we do something else now?'
A lot of people think I must be like Vince Noir. He's a bit like a child. He doesn't have any malice. He's even friendly to monsters. I am like that, I guess. I talk to anyone.
I guess standup is really painting pictures with words - especially for me, as I describe quite fantastical, visual things. My art teacher, Dexter Dalwood, always seemed to think they were linked. We bonded over our love of Vic Reeves.
They were too young to be proper parents. They never said, 'You've got to go to bed or you'll be tired for school'. They didn't mind - they let me stay up.
I wanted to create the weirdest show ever made on television - a punky, prog-rock nightmare of lurid colours.
I'd rather do smaller theaters, because it's more fun for the audience and more fun for me. I like to build up demand.
I've got this rep as a party boy, but the only show I've ever missed was when I had food poisoning from an Australian duck curry. I was puking buckets.
I love the Boosh, but there were so many people around us that it became a cash cow. Everyone's going, 'Do this. Do that. This is the answer'.
My parents had lots of parties. They were hopelessly bohemian. They were just 18 when they had me.
I quite like bacon sandwiches because they're colourful. Mashed potato on toast is fine. But colourful and easy to eat is best.
The Boosh was cult, but then it crossed over a bit, which we needed it to, because we were working on it full time, and it needed to go mainstream so we could keep making material.
On my show, nobody's being paid more than me. I don't ask what they're being paid - I just make sure they're not getting more than me.
When we got quite big and were generating a lot of money through the arenas, we became quite a big thing, and a lot of managers appeared, and it became a big machine, like we were in Pink Floyd or something, and I don't think we were into that. We didn't really compromise.
My mum and dad are massive Bowie fans, so I grew up listening to his music.
I hated school, so when I got to this place with other people who could draw and were interested in wearing makeup, it was amazing.
'Moonage Daydream' is my favourite because it's an amazing pop tune with such strange parts to it.