Oh Noel not again!

Noel Fielding: Luxury Comedy 

Thursdays 10 pm (E4)

When a comedian lists Spike Milligan and Salvador Dali as influences you know you are in for a healthy dose of the bizarre. But will they make you laugh?

I can’t claim to have been a huge Mighty Boosh fan but any real humour or sense of balance present in that show appears to have exited with Fielding’s partner in crime Julian Barratt.

This series is the ultimate in self-indulgence and departs even further from the oddball comedy that won the Perrier best newcomer award in 1998.

Fielding’s lukewarm stand-up shows and appearances on Never Mind The Buzzcocks had already told us that wearing a cape may be eccentric, but it is not actually funny.

Although some of the sketches border on amusing - Noel dressed in a cheap animal suit playing Dandelion, a manic depressive lion living in a rundown Zoo - the humour lacks depth.

There is also some potential in Sergeant Raymond Boombox, a surreal bright-yellow mix of Colombo and Serpico with traces of a few other much-mimicked TV Cops thrown in for good measure. His trusty deputy? A talking knife wound of course!

Other sketches are just confused and irritating.  The opening skit of a psychedelic cooking show starring Renny and Gaviskon, think of a French Mr Blobby cooking with a hairy Mexican wolf-boy, accompanied by running commentary from a Nasa spokesman sitting on a trapeze – well it’s as entertaining as it sounds.

We see an all too rare glimmer of self-deprecation when he sends up his fine-art background by comparing the mysteries of a felt-tip drawing of Pele holding a teacup and kicking a ‘ball’ to the Mona Lisa.  This is funny for 30 seconds.  The fact it is then developed throughout the show highlights the real dearth of creativity in Fielding’s solo material. 

A big plus point are the vivid colours, large quantities of face paint and creative mix of live-action, animation and puppetry that really pack a visual punch.

The soundtrack also fits well and is provided by Kasabian’s Sergio Pizzarono although  you can't help feeling it's an attempt to score cool points.

I just don’t get it and I don’t think I ever will. Perhaps diehard Boosh fans will say that’s the whole point, but this feels like 30 minutes of being trapped with that annoying, middle-class, ‘zany’ art student at a party and wishing you were anywhere else.

 “I think you can go a long, long way in performance if you have charm. On Buzzcocks, if someone’s charming, they don’t have to be funny. If not, it never works” the Cuban-heel wearing comic says. How right you are Noel.