One more reason for Putin to hate Britain

I settled down last night, after watching the excellent documentary Putin, Russia and the West, to see if Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy lived up to the hype. Unfortunately, the documentary that I watched prior to it had more laughs.


The trails for the E4 show were promising. I have a great affinity for the absurd, whimsy and the surreal, but I sat grim-faced throughout, the odd half-smile maybe a twitch of irritation on reflection. A slideshow of paintings by Dali and others of the surrealist movement would have been rewarding. Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy, also riffing on The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper and Yellow Submarine, was about as luxurious as steaming crap poured into one’s eyes at a spa, all the while being assured “this will make you fell better, the best money can buy” (one spa treatment for Stephen Hester, RBS boss, please). Frankly, contracting psoriasis would be funnier.

It was akin to turning up at a house party where everyone is stoned and those who have the energy think they’re hilarious. But they’re not. Fielding is very engaging as a captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks but taking part in a celebrity game show is much the same as an old sports pro turning pundit – it’s cash for old rope. Creating a show based on jokes that is more than will-o-the-wisp is harder. The sketches were cliché-ridden and banal – I know Richard Pryor said ‘start with truth’ and clichés have kernels of truth in them, but this is ridiculous. In a similar mould, the video for Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer (let alone Lady Gaga’s visual spectaculars) had more wit in four minutes than I imagine there would be in four hours of Fielding’s shtick (it’s a disaster when the adverts are more enjoyable).

In a way it was brave, overturning the fashion for observational comedy, yet it felt dated, as if stuck forty years in the past, rather than forward-looking. Even on paper, the lines would have fallen flat, spiking an offball concept from the outset. With this sentence, they would probably done an elongated skit on how words on paper always fall flat – it’s a two-dimensional format. Witness the deconstructivist material that equated a felt-tip pen drawing of Pelé with the Mona Lisa – the kind of hoary relativism and weak hokum-cum-satire that wouldn’t even make the grade as sixth-form humour (fifth-form possibly). Next week, after Putin, Russia and the West, I will be switching off.