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.'

Noel Fielding

Teacher Good Funny

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.

Noel Fielding

Time Art Use

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.

Noel Fielding

Young You Were

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.

Noel Fielding

Your Young You

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.

Noel Fielding

You Wit Who

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!

Noel Fielding

Would Tried Thought

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.

Noel Fielding

Good Way Use

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.'

Noel Fielding

You Wrong Who

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.

Noel Fielding

Art Your You

Fame is a bit Nietzschean. For everything good, something bad happens to you, so you have to sort of be careful.

Noel Fielding

Good Car You

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.

Noel Fielding

Amazing Wit Who

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.

Noel Fielding

You Way USC

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.'

Noel Fielding

Art Your You

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.

Noel Fielding

Love Amazing Wit

It is scary playing someone you know. You don't want to let him down.

Noel Fielding

Car You Yin

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.

Noel Fielding

Yard Ya Wit

The best stuff comes out when you're not making it for anything and you don't really know what you're making.

Noel Fielding

You Thing Thin

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.

Noel Fielding

Art Amazing Yin

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.

Noel Fielding

Food Art Yorkshire

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.

Noel Fielding

Work Famous You

I quite like bacon sandwiches because they're colourful. Mashed potato on toast is fine. But colourful and easy to eat is best.

Noel Fielding

Use Us Toast

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.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

I'm involved with this exhibition, which is a collection of Nobby Clarke's photos of the opening night of my own art exhibition.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

My friends who have kids look like they haven't been to bed for a year.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

You can't please all of the people all of the time; you can only please some of the people some of the time.

Noel Fielding

My mum and dad are quite hippyish, so I'm pretty naive. I take everyone at face value.

Noel Fielding

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?'

Noel Fielding

Kids feel like they can approach me, which is nice. I've created this character who's like a child-man.

Noel Fielding

'Moonage Daydream' is my favourite because it's an amazing pop tune with such strange parts to it.

Noel Fielding

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.'

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

The Monkees? I heard that they were quite into their party scene at one point.

Noel Fielding

I make an all right Bowie. Actually, I look more like Cilla Black with that wig.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

I wanted to create the weirdest show ever made on television - a punky, prog-rock nightmare of lurid colours.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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!

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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'.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding

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.

Noel Fielding