The Mighty Boosh is a British comedy troupe featuring comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Developed from three stage shows, The Mighty Boosh, Arctic Boosh (1999) and Autoboosh (2000), as well as a six-episode radio series, it has since spanned a total of 20 television episodes for BBC Three which aired from 2004 to 2007, and two live tours of the UK, as well as two live shows in the United States. The first television series is 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 style of humour in the Mighty Boosh is often described as being surreal, as well as escapist and new wave comedy.
Various members of The Mighty Boosh have appeared in a number of different comedy series including Nathan Barley, Snuff Box and Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy. Regular Boosh collaborators include Michael Fielding, Rich Fulcher, Dave Brown, Nigel Coan, Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry. The troupe is named after a childhood hairstyle of co-star Michael Fielding.
History
Noel Fielding first met Mighty Boosh collaborator Dave Brown whilst Fielding was studying a foundation course in fine arts at the Croydon School of Art. Then from 1992 to 1995 Fielding studied Graphic Design and Advertising at Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education and whilst there both Dave Brown and Nigel Coan were studying the same course as Fielding and all three shared a student house together. After they had lived together in student housing, Fielding, Brown and Coan then later lived together in a flat in Hackney in London.
While Fielding and Dave Brown were both art students at Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education "They were both regular visitors to the Hellfire Comedy nights next to the Wycombe Swan Theatre in High Wycombe, which is where Noel first met future Boosh co-creator, Julian Barratt". Fielding and Brown both attended one of Barratt's solo stand-up gig's at Hellfire and Fielding then approached Barratt after the gig had finished. After Fielding entered The Daily Telegraph open mic award and attended the final at the Edinburgh comedy festival he was signed to Avalon talent agency and through Avalon began performing on the same comedy bills as Barratt. Whilst performing on the comedy network together on the same bill they realised they liked each other's stuff and began writing and doing gigs together.
In 2006 Fielding said that "We were doing stand-up and were on the same bill together. I was on first and usually you can only have about one weird comedian on a line-up. He’d been doing it a bit longer than me... [Barratt was like]'...Let’s write together'. I’ve been stuck with him ever since and that was about eight years ago or something."
Whilst Barratt and Fielding were on The Jonathan Ross Show, Ross asked them "And did you perform as solo acts ever, did you do like stand up..." with Barratt responding "yeah, yeah, that's how we sort of met really on the circuit, doing stand up, yeah.", with Ross responding "But, but was it similar to the Boosh stuff, 'cos the Boosh stuff it seems to be so much of a partnership I can't imagine it being taken apart and being served up separately.", with Barratt responding that "We were both doing quite surreal stuff, eh...", with Fielding adding "It was quite weird wasn't it, a lot weirder than the show in a way...", with Barratt continuing "...but we sort of, when we first met we kind of liked each others comedy but we didn't know that it would work, we didn't know whether it was gonna cancel each other out and make....", with Fielding responding "Yeah, too weird to make sort of, straight...", with Barratt continuing "...might just become geography or something else or... this sort of thing, but it worked for some reason...", with Fielding adding "We 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 whilst Fielding used a ping-pong ball to make an eye patch. The pair soon found that they shared common interests in music and comedy which included Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and it was also commented that "Both wanted to get their material heard; neither had found anyone to work with who remotely understood what was going on in their head. It was a huge relief when they chanced upon one another and decided to be the new Goodies... ...What they take from the classic Seventies series is more the spirit of... ...silly and surreal comedy." Fielding has commented on their shared interest in music that "I was sort of a bit more rock n roll and pop and he [Julian Barratt] was a bit more jazz but then we sort of met in the middle with electro... but Julian was... I think he left university to join a band, we were both in bands before we were in the Boosh, so we sort of came from that background. Lot of our friends were in bands." It has also been commented that Barratt "...had dropped out of an American studies course at Reading University" and Barratt has also commented that when he was seventeen "We went to stay with a friend of a friend’s uncle but we came back after three days. We thought we’d make inroads into the jazz scene in London – we’d read biographies about guys who got gigs at Ronnie Scott’s and got spotted and immediately taken into someone’s band. So we told our parents we were leaving home. They gave us two days and we lasted three...". It was also commented that "...both [Fielding and Barratt] had fathers who loved Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, and who encouraged their sons to avoid getting proper jobs."
On his beginnings in stand up Barratt has commented that "I was never like Noel [Fielding] or Lee Mack, who are just funny all the time. No one ever said to me, you should be a comedian mate. But I watched a lot of stand-up at uni – people like Mark Lamarr, Sean Hughes, Eddie Izzard, just standing on a stage doing these phenomenal routines. And I could see how you could do it. So I started doing it myself, and I was so shocked when it worked. I remember one time I completely forgot what I was about to say, and I just ran out of the venue." It has also been commented that this occurred "...during his first standup sketch at Reading University..." and that he "...ran through the back door mid-act and through fields to a lake." Barrett has further commented that after he left the venue "...the manager came out after me and said: 'Get back in there, it’s going well.' So I went back. I suppose that was a big turning point for me."
Barratt and Fielding have commented on the beginning of the Mighty Boosh, with Barratt commenting that "We performed together for the first time in... ... was it in that show by Stewart Lee?", with Fielding replying "yeah, Stewart Lee's show, Moby Dick and King Dong (At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 1997)... ...Julian played King Dong's penis...", with Barratt replying "...an enormous penis...", and then with Fielding replying "...a perfect King Dong... ...then we thought lets do a show together."
Sometime in around 1998 they then put on their first comedy show and it was commented by Nigel Coan with whom they collaborated with on Mighty Boosh that "They did their first gig at Oranje Boom Boom which is sort of in Chinatown in London, and ah, which was ridiculous, I mean it was really, like, ridiculous costumes and um, they didn't know what... they really [didn't] know what they were doing... ...It was very raw, but it was, it was hilarious..." After Barratt and Fielding's first performance together at Oranje Boom Boom at bar De Hems, in London in April 1998, they developed their zookeeper characters, Howard Moon and Vince Noir, in a series of sketches for Paramount Comedy’s Unnatural Acts with Barratt commenting that "Early on we had Rich Fulcher, we were working on a sketch show...".
Nigel Coan has commented further on them developing the Mighty Boosh "...They thought let's do a show, an Edinburgh show. I think they started to think about doing that. So they got a gig at Hen and Chickens...". Dave Brown, who also collaborated on the Mighty Boosh with them, commented further on their time at the Hen and chickens which is a theatre bar in Islington, London, "They would use the Hen and Chickens as this kind of... place to, a platform to just try stuff out and it was just a great little place they could do a regular spot... ...where they would probably write and have ideas in the week, try stuff out for half of that and then for the rest of it, it would just be improv and mucking about. Then they took the, um, took The Mighty Boosh up to Edinburgh and then two more shows Arctic Boosh (1999), Autoboosh (2000)...".
Fielding and Barratt commented on their time at the Hen and Chickens, with Fielding commenting that "...cos it'd be stand up and people would come on and do straight stand up. And then we used to put potted plants all around the gig and music on... ...to try and make it into a sort of play... people couldn't believe the audacity. It got some sort of reputation as being sort of enigmatic but we're just really unprofessional. We didn't know anything about theatre or what you did." with Barratt responding to Fielding "Speak for yourself, I was in a Sartre play at university I'll have you know. Huis Clos." Fielding has commented further on their first live show, The Mighty Boosh, “Julian had a song about a mammoth that he wanted to sing to a girl in the audience, and I had a few ideas for some weird sketches... ...We started working on our ideas together... ...We were zookeepers and we got sucked through our bosses’ eyes and into a magic forest..."
Michael Fielding and Richard Ayoade both performed with the Mighty Boosh in 2002 during a live run through of a Mighty Boosh pilot. Richard Ayoade played adventurer Dixon Bainbridge, but Matt Berry replaced him in the first television series, since Ayoade was under contract with Channel 4.Inside the Zooniverse, The Mighty Boosh: Series 1, BBCDVD1553. Ayoade returned in the second and third series as a belligerent shaman named Saboo. 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.
All three of the Mighty Boosh stage shows – The Mighty Boosh (1998), Arctic Boosh (1999) and Autoboosh (2000) – were taken to the Edinburgh Fringe with Autoboosh also being taken to the Melbourne International Comedy festival in 2000 where it won the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award. The Mighty Boosh 1998 stage show won the Perrier best newcomer award at the Edinburgh Festival and was taken to the Sydney Comedy festival and Arctic Boosh was also taken to the Sydney Comedy Festival and was directed by Stewart Lee. With the success of Autoboosh, a radio series was commissioned by the BBC. Produced by Danny Wallace, The Boosh radio show was a six-part series that was first broadcast in 2001 on BBC London Live, later transferring to BBC Radio 4, and Barratt has humorously commented that "...so we did a radio show, we did, we sort of recorded it in a sort of old railway sort of arch... [with Fielding adding] in Shoreditch... ....built our studio out of weird... little children's toys...".
In 2001 the Mighty Boosh was included as a 3-minute segment in a new 60-minute pilot that was filmed to pitch a new TV show titled "Head Farm" to Channel 4. The pilot was directed by Stewart Lee and was described as a Friday Night Live style format that featured eight comedians as well as Richard Ayoade who performed alongside Matt Holness in their act Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight. The pilot ended up not being commissioned as a television series.