COME with them on a journey into a world where a gorilla works in a shop, people can be made of chamois leather, bubblegum or cheese and the man in the moon is lonely. The whimsy-averse may wince, but the Mighty Boosh cult seems to be growing, with thousands drawn to their childlike fantastical creations.
Despite a dodgy third series of the duo's BBC3 show, the last year has seen Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding (or Howard Moon and Vince Noir as their characters are known) soar to their highest success yet. They hosted their own summer festival, have
a book coming out, there's talk of a movie and this week they kick off their second national tour in Edinburgh.
It's a fitting place to begin because, though they're regarded as fixtures of the London indie scene, they made their names here with a series of hit Fringe shows.
Barratt and Fielding had already appeared as guests in a Stewart Lee show when they made their debut in 1998 as The Mighty Boosh, which won them the Perrier Best Newcomer Award. The following year's sequel, Arctic Boosh, won them a nomination for the main award, and two years later they were given their own radio series on Radio 4.
A TV version followed on BBC3, thanks to a pitch by Steve Coogan (whose production company Baby Cow made their pilot). He told the commissioning editor: "If we were young, we'd want to be them." But it wasn't a smash right away. The first series was a gentle, silly romp set in a zoo, with Moon and Noir as unlikely zoo keepers and a cast of talking, dancing, singing animals (along with Fielding's brother as zoo shaman Naboo and Rich Fulcher as their boss). The second series was, if anything, even less tied to realism, scrapping that set-up, putting the characters in a flat and concentrating on bizarre adventures like travelling to other planets and being captured by strange cave-dwelling hermaphrodites.
By series three, broadcast last year and set in a Bric-a-Brac shop, the show had become a full-blown hit. Like Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer or Rob Newman and Daqvid Baddiel before them, the Boosh turned a cult following among students and hipsters into mainstream success.
So far, the Boosh's increasing ubiquity hasn't sparked a backlash. The coming tour is a marathon stretching to next January, following the sell-out of their previous show. It will feature Naboo, Bollo the gorilla, the sinister Hitcher, the gormless Moon and various of their other characters.
Yet some feel that what was originally charming and inventive DIY comedy has now become too studiedly quirky. Some of the ever-expanding universe of characters – usually played by the duo themselves in what look like home-made costumes – seem like in-joke gimmicks, like the blacked-up Spirit of Jazz, or Tony Harrison, a disembodied pink head with tentacles. And the show has become increasingly self-referential, with myriad guest appearances and mentions of various showbiz pals.
It may be the last; in an interview last year they seemed tired, with Barratt saying: "It was hard, the hardest yet. Although it was the third series, there was no more money. We seem to have stretched goodwill from the crew to breaking point."
"We will never be as big as Little Britain," added Fielding.
While Barratt is a media-shy jazz fan and father (his partner is Nighty Night's Julia Davis), the preening Fielding is a regular gossip-page stalwart, hanging out with the likes of Peaches Geldof, Amy Winehouse, Rhys Ifans and Courtney Love at various envelope-openings.
Yet despite their differences, the pair clearly share their own world. When I interviewed them back in 1999 at the Festival, they were already a closed unit, giggling with each other and answering all questions only with wild – and unusable – flights of fancy (eg, "How did you meet?" "Our boots fell in love and walked towards each other.")
Stupid as some of their ideas may seem, it's clear that they're not included in their shows just to cater to a perceived audience or appeal to the mainstream – whether it's The Crack Fox (an urban fox addicted to crack, obviously) or a radar device to track flighty indie musicians, those ideas are in there because Barratt and Fielding obviously found them ridiculously funny. Perhaps the secret of their popularity is that their comedy is like a special club they've formed which fans long to be part of.
• Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 11-12 September. Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow,13-14 September. Returns only.
The full article contains 777 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
