Emma McAlpine chats to the American comic about early Mighty Boosh days, plans for Snuff Box and the best thing about dressing up as a woman.
If I was making a wish list of comedians to interview, Rich Fulcher would be up there. Star of seminal comedy shows The Mighty Boosh and Snuff Box, it goes without saying that he’s a thoroughly respected figure in British comedy, even if he does get recognised over here more than back home in the States.
So it is with some excitement that I am speaking to the man in question, despite the fact he is over 5,000 miles away, on the phone. Having lived in the UK for the past few years working and touring, Fulcher has returned to LA, although he still keeps a place in London: “I sort of go back and forth – I don’t like to get pinned down. My Dad was in the air force and whenever we moved to a new place I had to adjust. A lot of performers have military backgrounds. You either start beating people up or try to make people laugh!”
Like many fellow comics, Fulcher didn’t immediately start out making people laugh for a living. He went to law school in Dartmouth for three years and mostly hated every minute of it. “It wasn’t what I wanted to do – reading cases all day – it was so dull!" After graduating, he moved to Chicago to enrol in the famous Second City comedy school, following the paths of John Candy, Bill Murray and John Belushi. While taking improv and sketch classes he told his parents that he was working for a law firm to avoid disappointing them – even getting a friend to pretend to be his secretary and field his calls.
He got his first taste of the British comedy scene at the Edinburgh Festival in 1995, where he improvised university lectures: “We would come up with ridiculous scientific hypotheses like ‘Czechoslovakia can be mailed’ and pretend to be professors of things like Gynaecology and Egyptology.” After a successful few years with Modern Problems in Science, the group disbanded and Fulcher got a part in a Paramount sketch show with Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett called Unnatural Acts. While it wasn’t a huge success, the trio used the reoccurring zookeeper’s sketch as the premise for a new live show – The Mighty Boosh, which they took to Edinburgh in 1998.
I ask him what the reaction was like to the first few gigs, which must have seemed unique and bizarre to audiences at the time: “Our first preview show had about 10 people there and they just didn’t know what to think – their mouths were wide open. It’s funny you say there was nothing else like it because the media would lump it together with other shows that weren’t the same at all and say there was a ‘new surrealist movement afoot’.”
Surrealist movement or not, the public were lapping it up. The Mighty Boosh won the Perrier award for ‘Best Newcomer’ in its first year and sold out for two years running. A BBC3 contract followed and....well you know the rest. “Is it broadcast in America?” I ask him. “Initially it was on BBC America but they just listed it as 'alternative comedy' and it was on at 3am. It’s only just come out on DVD here but it’s growing.”
Although Fulcher has appeared on home soil comedies like The Sarah Silverman Show, his most successful work has been in the UK, where the BBC have allowed him more creative licence: “It’s different doing a cable thing to a network thing. I preferred the Boosh and Snuff Box because you have more control over what you’re doing and people really respect what you do as oppose to a cookie cutter sitcom.”
Ah, Snuff Box. If you haven’t discovered this wonderfully twisted sketch show yet, buy it on DVD now. At a time when sketch shows was knocking out reoccurring catchphrases at a rate of knots, Snuff Box was breaking the mould with story threads and macabre humour. Having met on the set of The Mighty Boosh, Matt Berry and Fulcher reluctantly agreed to make a sketch show for the BBC at the height of Little Britain mania, but insisted that they “do it on their own terms”. The result was a six-part series broadcast late on BBC3 in 2006. While it achieved cult hit status and was released on DVD, it has sadly never been recommssioned.
I ask him which of his characters he's most enjoyed playing and whether he agrees with a statement on his Wikipedia page that he’s ‘best known for playing dull-witted, comic goons.’
“Playing what? Goons?! My God. Well I love playing Bob Fossil – he’s a dull-witted goon. And Eleanor who I’m currently playing. We were going to do a Boosh tour and it got backtracked so I decided it was a good opportunity to do Eleanor.”
‘Eleanor The Tour Whore’ is Fulcher’s latest character creation, a man-eating groupie who briefly appeared in The Mighty Boosh. The show involves Fulcher in full drag as the slutty Eleanor – a role he seems quite at home in. He tells me the advantages of dressing up like a woman are “seeing reactions of young male band members being scared to death – I love that.”
If you want to see Fulcher live, he is performing in Edinburgh for a limited 10-day run over August. For all you Boosh and Snuff Box fans out there, he says: “They’re writing the Boosh film and there’s a CD coming out. As far as Snuff Box is concerned – we’d love to do another series but there are no plans to recommission it as yet. I might try and see what’s going on over here with it. They’re not really ready for it in America, but hopefully they will be soon!”
Come on BBC, you reached your nadir with Horne & Corden. Where’s that creative licence gone?
www.petitiononline.com/sbuffbox/petition.html
Rich Fulcher: An evening with Eleanor The Tour Whore is at the Udderbelly from 21st-30th August.
Return to the Edinburgh Fringe homepage
Add an event
Mac DeMarco, East End Live and Bleached: Editor's Choice - Live Music.jpg)
Tuesday 21st MayMac DeMarco @ The Garage Mac DeMarco // "My Kind of Woman" by capturedtrac...