NOEL Fielding is all over our screens at the moment thanks to the Great British Bake Off – but less is known about his life away from the cameras.
The 50-year-old star is also an artist and an actor, and was famed for his hedonistic and boozy lifestyle.
The father-of-two was a surprise addition the Bake Off tent given his rock and roll past.
He is said to have snogged a then-teenage Peaches Geldof, daughter of music legend Bob Geldof, confessed to wild nights, and taking drugs.
Nowadays he is a dad to his five year old daughter Dali, and three year Iggy, and meditates to relax.
Born and raised in South London in the early seventies, the quirky star grew up with his brother, Michael, and his first job was in a cake shop which he got sacked from on the first day for eating the stock.
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He met fellow comedian Julian Barratt at Croydon art college and they formed the eccentric comedy troupe the Mighty Boosh.
After winning best newcomer at Edinburgh Comedy Awards in 1998 three BBC series of Might Boosh followed, and sell out stage shows, with their wacky style earning Noel millions of fans.
More mainstream fame came from his other off-beat roles, playing Richmond in Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd and as team captain opposite Phil Jupitus on Never Mind the Buzzcocks from 2009 to 2015.
Jupitus famously called him the “gothic George Best”.
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Fame, however, led to drug addiction.
Noel embraced fame and became a regular on the London party circuit, hanging out with the likes of Russell Brand, Pete Doherty, Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss in Camden's Hawley Arms pub.
Kurt Cobain's widow and Hole singer Courtney Love is said to be one of his flings and he dated The Kills singer Alison Mosshart and Rod Stewart's daughter Kimberly.
Noel hit headlines in 2007 when he was spotted “full-on snogging” Pixie Geldof in a club when she was 16 and still at school.
Noel said of Pixie at the time: "When I first met her I had no idea who she was and that she was so young.
"It caused a lot of problems because her dad wanted to kill me obviously."
Two years later he spoke of his past A-Z of drugs including MDMA, magic mushrooms, cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine.
He said of his early career: "I took too many drugs and was hanging out with the wrong people.
"MDMA is too strong for me. I took pills on the rave scene and didn’t like them at all.
"It was like my birthday every day. All these people saying, ‘Do you want drugs?
"Do you want girls? Do you want drink?’ “You don’t really notice but gradually you end up out until 4am instead of 2am and then it would become 6am and 7am.
"Coke is always available if you want it.
"It wasn’t every night but I might do it once a week or something.
"It seems normal because you think everyone does it.
“When I took ketamine everything turned into two dimensions. I felt like I was in a weird puppet show.”
Noel quit drugs in 2006, saying: “I thought, ‘This is too much for my head, I won’t come back from this’.”
Russell Brand joked about Noel’s past when he got the GBBO job, saying: “I think anything you bake should be run by a sniffer dog before anyone vulnerable tastes it."
The star previously blamed his ways on his parents Dianne and Ray.
He said: “My parents had lots of parties. They were hopelessly bohemian. They were just 18 when they had me.
“They were too young to be proper parents. They never said, ‘you’ve got to go to bed or you’ll be tired for school’. They didn’t mind — they let me stay up.”
Fans of the star will be aware of his enthusiasm for music, so it comes as no surprise that he has made appearances in a number of music videos.
He can be spotted in the videos for Kasabian's Vlad The Impaler and You're In Love With a Psycho, as well as Razorlight's In The Morning.
Noels' repertoire does not end there, as he is also a keen artist.
The comedian has held a number of different exhibitions, including The Jelly Fox, a video installation that was shown at the Saatchi Gallery in 2012.
In 2010, he reformed his womanising ways and started dating Radio X DJ Lliana Bird and they now live together in Highgate.
He has been in a relationship with one of the long-running radio presenters in the business, Lliana Bird.
She used to be a presenter on Radio X and is the founder of a charity to help refugees and displaced people called Choose Love.
She has starred in various theatre shows, has her own production company called Bird & Be, and has appeared as a guest commentator on Sky News and BBC Breakfast.
The couple live in a leafy north London suburb and Noel now spends his time painting and running around after his kids, which helps with his physique.
When joining Great British Bake Off in 2017, he said he tries his hardest to avoid sugar.
He said: "I get more work when I’m thinner, so I can’t put on weight.
“It’s not that I don’t like cake — I have a very sweet tooth. But I was playing Alice Cooper and I had to lose a stone, so I wasn’t eating sugar.
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"You can’t just get straight back onto sugar, as it’s quite a powerful thing.
“I don’t eat anything, I’m like a plant.”
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