For anyone who has watched the Mighty Boosh, talking to Rich Fulcher on the phone is a surreal experience. On the show, he plays a variety of characters, including, but not limited to, salacious gigolo-soliciting middle-aged women, green-skinned polo-bemonacled cockneys, and decrepit girdle-bound jazz fanatics. He’s best known as Bob Fossil, an overweight, sexually and mentally deranged zoo-keeper cum club-promoter, who exclusively wears skin-tight blue polyester.

Fulcher’s characters have been described as a “watered down version of himself”, so when I pick up the phone to call, anything seems possible. I’m half expecting to hear an elongated “hellloooo” à la Eleanor when he picks up.

“Is that Rich?” I ask. “This is he,” he replies, and we’re away. Rich has just written a book, in the character of Fossil, called “Tiny Acts of Rebellion“, which is, straightforwardly, a guide to minor acts of rebellious nature. The obvious question, as with virtually everything he does, is “Why?!”

The response is of mixed persuasiveness. “Edgar Allen Poe said there is an imp inside all of us. It’s more of an impish quality that we need to enact, because if we don’t, we turn into that Michael Douglas character in Falling Down. We just go nuts all at once.”

“I’m saving the world one fake vomit at a time.”

I’m tempted to suggest that not everyone is quite as close to the brink as Rich, but as I hold my tongue he continues:

“We can’t topple governments on a daily basis. Not all of us, we’re not all Ghandi. But we can be the last person to clap at a concert. I think it’s beneficial for society, so we don’t have looting in the streets. I’m saving the world one fake vomit at a time.”
The credo seems a little ad hoc, but I’ll buy it from a person who is unhinged enough to operate on a sliding scale from the collapse of Indian colonialism to rude clapping.

Does Rich have any favourite acts of civil disobedience? “I like to go have a transaction in a store like, say, Boots… let’s just say.” One gets the impression he isn’t just saying. “I finish, I get my change, and I walk away. Then I come right back and say, “by the way, I just farted.” I like to do that. They’re quite shocked by that. I like to go to storekeepers and say, “May I help you?” They don’t quite know what to do with that.”

The book is full of ideas like these. A quick glance reveals that it rather amusingly operates on a ratings system of one to four fingers, evenly distributed over two hands so as to ensure continuity of profanity.

“In the 13th century syphilitic squids ruled the earth.”

Fulcher also has a few rebellious suggestions for students: “Sometimes you never know if a professor has been reading your paper. Throw something totally random into the middle of a sentence, like, “In the 13th century syphilitic squids ruled the earth. Also, giving people the underbird – flipping people off when they can’t see you.”

Then he gets excited—”Oh! Greeting someone with a limp, well lotioned hand. That always works. Say you’re at a cocktail party and you’re meeting the faculty, just let your hand go totally limp.” And also lotion it? “If you care to.” At this point, I’m feeling quite relieved to be interviewing Rich by phone.

Bob Fossil, for those who don’t know him, is to say the least a visual character. To fans, something would be missing without the not-quite-tantalising flash of flesh provided by his six-sizes-too-small polyster button down shirt. How exactly does Fulcher translate his most famous character into prose?

His first answer is a despairing, “I can’t!” Then, perhaps remembering that he is promoting the book, he rethinks: “No, I have a great illustrator – Mr Bingo. And of course Dave Brown – Bollo – does the design layout. So I sent them words, and they made them into a niiice thiiing! [sic]

“It’s very difficult to find the Fossil outfit. That’s my rationale for no one doing it.”

While we’re talking visuals, I can’t help but ask where he buys his shirts. “You’ve gotta hunt these things down. If you go to a Boosh show, you’ll find everyone is dressed as Howard, or Vince, or Bollo. It’s very difficult to find the Fossil outfit. That’s my rationale for no one doing it. That colour is not known to humans.” Nothing to do with it revealing the wearers nipples? “That might also be something to do with it. But the polyster blend is really difficult to get hold of.” What are you wearing right now? (This is the first and last time I will ask this question on the phone.) “I’m in Jeans! In dungarees! A lot of people might find that disappointing. And a black shirt.” He says the last bit seductively. “It’s my little incognito outfit.”

Book aside, Fulcher is best known for the Boosh TV show, in which he stars alongside Noel Fielding and Julian Barrat. Getting to this point was less than straightforward – all appearances to the contrary, as a kid in Chicago, Rich always wanted to be a lawyer. So much so that he has actually passed the bar, a snippet of information which dramatically reduces my faith in the American legal system.

While at law school in Virginia, which he describes as “tremendously boring”, Rich signed up to a comedy class in Chicago. “It had trained Bill Murray, John Candy and John Bellushi… I keep mentioning the fat guys in comedy, but it was a spawning ground.” Turning to Rich’s other spawning ground, I ask him what his parents thought of his career change. It transpires that, at least until recently, they had no idea. “I’m writing a screenplay about it right now. It’s called, ‘Mom, I’m not a Lawyer.'”

“We started out with a weird scientific premise, like Czechoslovakia can be mailed“

Parental deception underway, Rich began his comedic career. Starting out in America, Fulcher toured internationally, eventually reaching the Edinburgh festival. “We improvised a university lecture. Basically, we started out with a weird scientific premise, like ‘Czechoslovakia can be mailed’, and all taught from the perspective of a Professor of something chosen by the audience. We got gynaecology a lot.” The show was a success, and Fulcher returned to the festival twice more.

Having grown roots in the UK, Fulcher met Fielding and Barret while filming sketch show Unnatural Acts, which was of dubious popularity. “Not many people have seen it,” he muses. “I think six people have seen it.” In a rare moment, Rich had found some people who could tolerate working with him for (what has now been) a decade, so he didn’t pass up the opportunity.

The rest is history – live acts, then a radio show. After a successful pilot, the Boosh finally hit the beeb’s televisual airwaves in 2004. There hasn’t been any new material since the third series aired some time ago, so I’m intrigued to hear Rich’s future plans.

“There are plans – there are so many plans, that’s the problem! It’s figuring out what to do next – there’s the film plan, the fourth series plan, the US tour plan…”
I hesitate for a second. The film plan?
“Yeah, that’s one of the options for the Boosh right now. It needs to get written and all of that”, he adds, casually. 

“So you can promise me that there will definitely be a Boosh movie?”

“Definitely. Maybe. At some point.”

Spooks returns to our screens next week, but its creator is returning to Oxford. The man behind the show, Stephen Garrett, has just been appointed Oxford University’s News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media. Having read his undergraduate degree at Merton College, he is now Executive Chairman of Kudos Film & Television Ltd, one of Britain’s premier television production companies, which, in addition to Spooks, produces Hustle and Life on Mars.

Law didn’t hold much fascination for Garrett at Oxford. ‘I think the degree’s called jurisprudence, which just kind of emphasises how detached it was from the real world. The aspiration for a career in law lasted about half a term and I realised that I didn’t like lawyers terribly much. The terrifying thing about law is that the people you study with are the people you’re going to be stuck with for the rest of your life, so the prospect seemed doubly grim.’ Instead, he filled his time working for and editing Isis, Oxford’s independent student magazine.

‘It was something I always wanted to do. At Freshers Fair I think I just accosted the Isis people and said I wanted to write. I started writing film reviews and got in that way, did some photography and writing features, became features editor and then editor.’ Garrett didn’t actually engage in any drama or film whilst at university – although clearly you couldn’t exactly pick up a camera and shoot for Film Cuppers in the same way that we can today. ‘No not at all, I didn’t do any drama or direction while I was at Oxford. I wrote about film, thought about film, but didn’t actually do it.’

His first experience of the TV industry was trying to get his first job. The standard route was to apply to the BBC, where Garrett actually failed to get in. ‘I got as far as an interview there, and there were three very grey men talking to me, and one of them was completely silent for about 20 minutes. And then he turned to me and looked up from his crossword or whatever he was doing, and said: ‘Hmm, you want to make films, don’t you?’ and with a kind of puppyish excitement I said yes. ‘Ahh,’ he said, and I realised I was dead. So I didn’t get into the BBC. I then wrote to the others – there were then a number of ITV companies around – so I wrote to some of them and ended up with them pretty much straight after leaving Oxford. I had four weeks off and then moved up to Manchester to work for Granada, where I started in local news. It was the late 70s and it was a really interesting time to be there, incredibly vibrant.’ Garrett’s enthusiasm about the industry has clearly endured throughout his career – his excitement when talking about the early days is palpable.

In his lectures, Garrett will address TV drama, which has formed the backbone of his career, although originally he had more ambitions of more Hollywood-esque proportions. ‘If I’m being honest, my aspiration when leaving Oxford was to work in the movies, and to work as a director. And I suppose around my mid-twenties I became much more excited by the possibilities of TV drama, and recognised that if I had skills they were probably as a producer rather than as a director.

‘The world is full of mediocre directors and I didn’t really want to join their ranks. Film is pretty much an impossible dream for most people. There are people languishing around Soho who call themselves producers who’ve literally never made a film and never will.

‘What’s great about television is it’s immediate, it really happens and even if it’s relatively unsuccessful it’s still watched by a lot of people. When you can make successful returning series as I’ve been lucky enough to do with Spooks, Ashes to Ashes, Hustle and Life on Mars, which will routinely be watched by six million people each week, you just feel you’re doing something worthwhile because you’re entertaining a lot of people. Television just seems to connect with the world better than a lot of film. That said, would I give my eye teeth to produce a staggeringly successful movie-sure-and we’re still trying!’

‘Pat yourself on the back for going to a university where they don’t do media studies’

On the subject of media studies degrees­ – which Oxford doesn’t offer, Garrett has mixed feelings. He will be attached to the English Faculty, despite his title of Professor of Broadcast Media. ‘I actually think the best people who work in film and television are those who come to it with a bunch of other ideas and stimuli from other areas. I think there’s something slightly solipsistic about studying media, particularly on an undergraduate basis. You know the expression ‘pop will eat itself’-I think the same is true of TV and film. If that’s all you know about, then what have you got to say about the world?’ I’m actually all for people studying completely random things and then coming into film and television because their brains will be excited about other stuff. I mean, would we turn down someone who did media if they seem interesting-no. But we’ve got a very eclectic bunch.’

‘Don’t worry about not studying media studies – pat yourself on the back for going to a university where they don’t do media studies,’ Garrett advises. ‘I think you just want someone who’s engaged with the world. You cannot believe the number of bland CVs I get, where no creative effort has been put into the presentation of a relatively useful past. And then you just want to see that someone’s already interested in the world. If someone’s got involved in student journalism or radio or tried to make their own short film or directed plays. If people come to you straight out of uni and they don’t seem to have made any attempt, during term time or during the vacations, to do something that might add value to their experience, you have to feel that they’re being slightly cynical in applying to you and not really that committed.’

When asked what work he is most proud of in his own career, Garrett struggles to pin down a specific production. ‘If I’d rubbed a magic lamp while I was at Oxford, and the genie had asked me for a wish, I probably would have said that if I could make one successful film or TV series in my lifetime I’d be satisfied. In a way, it all started with Spooks which of all of our shows, was the one that was my idea, my title and then a whole group of people came on board to make it as fabulous and successful as it now is. Growing a business and bringing a group of wonderful people together was extraordinarily fulfilling and not something I set out to do.’

Kudos originally pitched Spooks to Channel 4, ITV and BBC, who all said no. ‘ITV memorably said, ‘Well with the end of the Cold War, there aren’t really enemies – who cares about spies?” Garrett explains wryly. ‘We’d done quite a bit of research for storylines, and about half-way down our list was a guy called Osama bin Laden and the fact that he’d tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1994 – so he was on our list but not on the CIA’s. And anyway, eventually it coincided with a change of team at the BBC, so we re-pitched it and got it. So it almost didn’t happen. That’s true of almost everything we’ve done actually. Life on Mars was rejected for almost seven years. Things that in hindsight seem like no-brainers don’t seem like no-brainers at the time. There was no tradition of spy dramas. Weirdly, 24 was simultaneously being developed in the States as the show Alias. So there was something in the ether as these spy dramas all bubbled to the surface around the same time.’

‘Osama bin Laden was on our list, but not on the CIA’s’

Clearly the events of September 11th 2001 had great repercussions for a show about terrorists and spies that was in production. ‘Yes, as with 24, we were in production when 9.11 happened. We were initially writing a pre-9.11 show with a very different sense of who the enemies might be, and suddenly had to at very short notice recalibrate the show for a changed world. We thought at the time that the show would be a disaster because the last thing audiences would want would be a reminder of how scary the world has become. Oddly the very opposite is true; people seemed to take comfort in reality (albeit a very heightened version) thrust down their throats week in week out, when Spooks launched. I think it oddly helped make it as successful as it became, rather than hindrance.’

MI5, the real life organization that Spooks is based on, was initially helpful in the research process for the production. ‘Very uncharacteristically, when Spooks launched, MI5 leaked their approval to the press, which doubled their number of applicants. And obviously post 9.11 they needed to recruit. But then about 6 weeks later they recanted, because they said although they were getting more applicants, they were all the wrong kind of applicants, full of people who thought they could breeze around Britain in Armani suits saving the planet. Our amiable relationship faded away.’

Garrett’s favourite aspects of his job from day to day involve the dynamic, creative process of writing – although he’s clear that that’s not where his own skills lie.

‘When you’re exposed to as I am, day in day out, in some cases genius writers, you realise what your own limitations might be. But actually sitting in a room with a great writer, there’s probably nothing quite as thrilling as that. It’s watching imagination happen, literally before your eyes, is thrilling. Seeing a great idea at the start as a germ and watching that take fruit. It’s literally at it’s best, it’s the creative process in flower. There are times when that gets bogged down in the actual legal complexity of making anything. But when you can find those moments of pure creativity (other people’s not mine!) that’s very exciting.’

Tuesday of 3^rd Week.

Heather , 2^nd Year, English.

Heather’s Fashion Statement: “Sometimes I think I dress like a Victorian schoolgirl, sometimes like a boy from the 90s. Consequently, I have a wildly uncoordinated wardrobe”

Summer’s high-waisted floral skirts and thin t-shirts can be easily recycled into the winter-florals trend, when teamed with (as my mother would say) a “sensible” winter coat. Heather’s coat is perfect for petite frames, the voluminous A-Line shape provides a big enough “canvass” to stop the large print becoming overwhelming, but because it’s cut just below the hip it keeps her silhouette looking sleek and stops her legs from looking short!

Blues of all shades are everywhere this autumn/winter, and the large buttons and thick-checked fabric of Heather’s coat nods to the the prevalent military look and masculine influenced tailoring. Also, I love the cowboy boots: not strictly on trend, but idiosyncratic and eclectic.

Student fashion at its best, a thrown together, irreverent look which is nevertheless well balanced, well structured and well executed!

x

Cherwell news editors Nicky Henderson and Izzy Boggild-Jones discuss climate activism, gender equality week, and what the optimal moustache length might be.

Shere Hite is a frightening woman. The first thing that strikes you is her incredible beauty, considering her age (Hite is 67). Next is her calm, eerie and slow tone of voice, which sends shivers down your spine.

Yet it is only when she unabashedly asks her audience, “Do you masturbate?” at the beginning of her speech, prompting nervous laughter from gathered students, that you realise her intimidating levels of self-confidence.

Since the 1970s, Hite has written twelve books on women and their inferior status in sexual life. She claims, “Sex is too focused on male-oriented intercourse…it is quite hard to orgasm during intercourse for a woman as it does not compare to our masturbation.”

To produce her “Hite Reports”, Shere has interviewed many women, concluding that 70% do not reach orgasm during the penetrative sex, because it lacks clitoral stimulation, an aspect of sex from which most women derive pleasure.

For Hite, this problem of male-oriented sex stems from our traditions and social notions. “Is it true that our shape defines our roles? There is the assumption that psychology grows out of our nature. I do not agree.” She adds, “Why is it that calling boy a ‘girl’ is still an insult? We need to upgrade the status of a girl. If men were bleeding, we would have called the days a national holiday.”

Hite is deeply troubled by sexual inequality. She is convinced that to gain gender equality we need to start on a sexual level. One of the problems she identifies is language. How can you communicate with your partner if you would like some “clitoral stimulation”?  Hite pleads, “Can you suggest a better word? This has too many syllables.”

She also points out that female genitalia are often referred to in derogatory terms. “Cunt is another word that has become a form of insult. You dirty rotten cunt.”

Hite is critical of societal sexual attitudes. She says, “There is a view that sex is separate from the rest of your life, you shouldn’t masturbate. I don’t agree…we need to change the direction of culture to improve sexual freedom.”

Hite has also criticised family as the source of oppression for many females in her third report. As a result of her research, she concluded that 98% of married women are dissatisfied. However, her methodology has come under heavy criticism as only 4% of women to whom the survey was sent replied – it has been suggested that those who replied might have been more inclined to answer negatively. In a similar survey led by The Washington Post which used the technique of random sampling, as many as 93% of women were satisfied with their marriages.

As a result of the hostility she has encountered to her work she renounced her American citizenship, becoming a German citizen, as her husband at the time was. But Hite won’t tell me about how her research has affected her personal life. She seems heavily guarding her own sexual privacy, despite her willingness to disregard others’.

When I ask her what advice she would give to a fresher in this University, she switches topic suddenly saying, “But Marta, I came here to ask you personal questions, how do you reach orgasm?” Maybe it’s because down to all the psychological oppression, maybe it’s a result of cultural relativism, but I answer the question only half-heartedly and slightly intimidated, leave as soon as I can.

THE HITE FILE

Personal: Born in 1942, in Missouri. Hite married in 1985 a German citizen 19 years her junior. The marriage lasted 15 years.

Education: BA & MA at University of Florida; Started Ph.D studies in Columbia where she modelled part-time. Claims she received a Ph.D. from Nihon University, Japan

First Book: The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976) where she argued that orgasm is right for women given the right stimulation.

Plans for the future: Create a new, televised Hite report, for which she filmed several Oxford students.