On Those Noel/Pixie Rumors

A Fandom Old™️ Explains Where These Rumors Came From

Picture it; The year is 2005 and you’re listlessly searching YouTube. You manage to stumble across an episode of the Mighty Boosh. Or rather, the first ten minutes of an episode. The title read “Nanageddon 1/3”. This means nothing to you, but the guy in the thumbnail is cute, so you click.

And the next thing you know, you’re suddenly a part of the Boosh fandom—you’re making friends, you’re reading and writing fic, you’re trading in gossip, you’re squealing with glee (we called those ‘squee’s back in the day) any time Noel and Julian kiss.

This is (obviously) my story. I was obsessive when it came to staying up to date on what the boys were doing; I felt like I had to be, as an American fan. I certainly wasn’t making it over to England to see a live show due to being a mix of poor and underage.

I was really out here reminding everyone that the word ‘fan’ is actually a shortening of ‘fanatic’, the way I was in every Boosh related community on LiveJournal. I had my ear to the ground always.

I was there for the genisis of those Noel and Pixie rumors and I’m here trying to make sure that those same rumors don’t end up outliving me. The only evidence we have that they were ever an item comes from tabloids (British tabloids, mind—rags notorious being being even worse than American tabloids, which is a feat). Meanwhile, if you follow the tabloid trail, it actually paints the picture that they were trying to make the “Noel is cheating on his girlfiend” rumors stick with just about any woman he was ever in a room with.

Let’s break it down:

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Shipping, obviously, was huge in fandom. The two biggest RPF (real person fiction) ships involving Noel were Noelian and Noelia. Noel x Russell was also quite popular (this was obviously before everything came out).

Amongst all possible ships, one rare pair stood out. Noel x Pixie. This pairing didn’t have a name.

Because the only one who cared about this pair was the fucking tabloids.

From both my own recollection as well as weeding through the archives for this publication, it’s obvious that the subset of fans who believed the Pixie rumors were true (or could have been true) were small.

Because the fact of the matter is, we were a small fan base, but we were rabid. If a shred of evidence for that infamous kiss between Noel and Pixie existed, we would have it. Even by second, third, or sixth hand accounts from someone’s best friend’s cousin who happened to be at the Groucho Club that night and totally saw them snogging u guise, I promise!!

There was never a scrap of evidence for Noel and Pixie being anything other than purely platonic.

Noel has denied these rumors over and over:

I’ve heard tell that Pixie herself has made these denials, too, but I’ve yet to find a paper trail for that.

Whats more, the tabloids didn’t even seem too picky about which Geldolf they shipped Noel with. Here he is having to deny having had any romantic links to Pixie’s sister, Peaches (may she rest in peace):

(Question: Noel, what’s the score with Peaches Geldof? Were you really dating her? Answer: [sighs] The papers made up a story. Basically, I was out in London getting loads of hassle everywhere I went and ended up in Koko. Anyway, this girl said to me, '‘Why don’t you come backstage and get away from it all?” It was Peaches. I just went to […])

([…] her dressing room, chilled, some of my mates were there, we all went to a party…it was nothing. She’s like, 17!” Question: So you’re not just shagging anything with a pulse then? Answer: No. We’ve got girlfriends!)

So it kind of seems like, putting the pieces together here, that Peaches helped Noel out when he was having a terrible night out. The two hung out for a bit and then later (a year or so), the runs into Pixie. Hey, I/you know your/my sister. Hey, we hang out in the same party spots. Hey, let’s chat.

Because really, Pixie was hanging out in these different party spots. Groucho Club. Hawley Arms. Koko. Etc. She was around. So was Noel. They both hung out where the trendies hung out. It’s not an absurd thought that they might become friends.

I think where a lot of the public’s confusion comes from is due to Noel’s somewhat idiosyncratic use of language. Because he supposedly said he and Pixie have ‘chemistry’:

(I say ‘supposedly’ because this comes from the Daily Express—another tabloid)

And here Noel is again, using the word ‘chemistry’ in the 2013 IT Crowd documentary (IT Manual):

“I think she”, he said of Katherine Parkinson’s character Jen, “Was supposed to find me [Richmond] a bit horrendous, but she was always quite motherly to me, sort of quite liked Richmond. They had a bit of chemistry, which they weren’t supposed to have at all!”

I doubt he’s implying here that Jen and Richmond, who he views as having a mother/child dynamic, had sexual chemistry.

Just as its doubtful that he meant he and Pixie had sexual chemistry. Despite what Bob might have thought at the time.

From the same New Woman interview (In Bed with the Mighty Boosh, written by Danielle Hine). This was the question (and answer) that prompted the journalist to inquire about the Peaches rumors:

(Question: You coping with being the object of so many women’s sexual fantasies? Noel: I absolutely love it! Although the idea of 16-year-old girls fantasizing over me is a little disturbing. Julian: [looks very uncomfortable] I find it weird when people run after me.)

But who knows. I wasn’t there at the time. And neither were the tabloids.

Because the fact of the matter is, Noel was incapable of hanging out with a female of any age without the rags deciding they were an item. Here they are shipping him and his good (platonic) friend Alison Mosshart:

(They also pull this ‘open relationship’ fact out of their asses. The tabloids were really out here writing RPF on the world stage without a lick of shame.)

Looking back, it’s no wonder that Dee wanted to pour so much of her hatred for tabloids into another song about unfounded gossip (Lies by Robots In Disguise). Especially considering when and how the Pixie rumors started:

(click to embiggen)

The first time the rags attempted to get these Noel/Pixie rumors off the ground, People reported that Dee had dumped Noel over it and she had fucked all the way off to Germany because of it.

And while OP was worried about this possibility, cooler heads chimed in with their well formed opinions:

And, well. The commentator was correct. Because the next year we were blessed with We’re In The Music Biz (peep track seven, written about the city where the Bots stayed to write and record this album).

They’d been trying to get this salacious rumor about Noel fucking a ‘schoolgirl’ off the ground since 2007. I don’t recall anyone taking these rumors seriously back when they were being freshly printed.

But somehow (maybe by virtue of repitition—you repeat a lie enough times it begins to sound true) it now seems to be cemented in the minds of some (mainly newer fans, people who only know Noel via Bake Off, or those who were vaguely aware of him and always thought he was creepy for whatever reason¹) as being pure, proven fact.

And listen. I know that all the above isn’t irrefutable proof. I’m not an idiot, nor am I that teenaged fanatic anymore. I’m a grown up (ironically me and Pixie are the same age) who was also once a Russell Brand fan. I’ve been in fandom and around fannish spaces enough to know that sometimes people you love will turn out to be monsters and sometimes people you thought were more levelheaded will go to bat for those monsters.

What I’m saying is, I don’t think Noel is beyond reproach. I don’t think he’s never done anything wrong in his life. He’s human, he’s fucked up before. He’s also grown and can take accountability for his wrong doings on his own.

But I also (even as a survivor of SA myself) don’t think every rumor of someone potentially being a preditor should be taken onboard—especially when there’s no evidence for it. There’s not even circumstantial evidence for it. There’s just contradicotry accounts from tabloids claiming that Noel dated Peaches—just kidding, wrong sister! He actually cheated on Dee with Pixie and Dee fled to Germany about it! Psych! Dee was actually just recording an album in Berlin and they never broke up but he’s totally fucking that lady from The Kills. When he’s not being Courtney Love’s boytoy. Even though he and Pixie have totally also been secretly dating this whole time, too.

If that were true, he could have just publicly dated Pixie once he and Dee actually broke up in 2009. Pixie was legal then. There would have been some push back, but not much. It was 2009, not 2019—it was easier back then for creepy older dudes to date barely legal girls and get away with it.

But he didn’t. They broke up and within a year he started dating the woman he’s still with.

TL;DR: There’s zero evidence that Noel ever dated Pixie, but there is some evidence that the tabloids just wanted to write scandalous, crazy stories about the rock n’ roll comic carrying on the grand tradition of assulting minors. I think the tabloids chose the two youngest Geldofs because Bob seems to be a loving father whose own father-in-law (Jess Yates; host of Stars on Sunday) was ousted from the TV industry for being “embroiled in a scandal involving his 16 year old lover”. I think, remembering this, the rags wanted to see if they could stir the pot between the two men and eventually had to stop when 1) Pixie (the youngest) turned 18 and 2) Bob didn’t fist fight Noel on stage in front of a live audience.

Just some food for thought.

1. And to those of you who claim you ‘always found him creepy’ and are using this unfounded rumor as your excuse to finally say that loud and proud, I’d request you ask yourself why you always found the effiminate older man to be creepy and sit in contemplative silence with whatever answer comes up.