Back to Earth
I came up with the idea of dividing the story into three sections. I thought of it at the start but had this idea that you couldn't have a section of a story that's only two chapters. Then I decided you could and it was necessary to slow readers down a bit, because I felt as if they were rushing to the end and then feeling all "What?" I have no idea if this helped, by the way. I hope so.

The epigraph for this section is a quote by Noel that was always in the story, but now moved to here. There are no characters. There's only us. He was saying that Vince and Howard, and all the characters they played, were only ever fictional representations of their real selves and true emotions. The Mighty Boosh is, at its heart, a psychodrama.

So here we are having undergone the worst punishment after all – Back to Earth! But of course Julian and Noel don't feel as if they've been punished and don't remember being sent back. And in this section we leave behind the fantasy world of The Waystation and are with the "real" Julian and Noel. Yes I know, they're still fictional characters in my story, but as Noel says: there are no characters.

Title
Even though this is Chapter 30, it is The Beginning, because from Julian and Noel's perspective, this is the beginning of their story. Little do they know!

Quote
Because we are now in the "real world", the quotes in this section are both ones from the real life Julian and Noel. This first one from Julian Barratt describes his initial meeting with Noel Fielding: It was the beginning of some very early chemistry there. Chapter title drop! I did my best to evoke that feeling of "very early chemistry".

https://youtu.be/awqP4vWIRrc

Date
Like pretty much everything else, the date of June 1996 is completely made up. I don't actually know the exact date Julian and Noel met.

Noel was at college until 1995, and both Julian and Noel were on the stand-up comedy TV series GAS in 1997 (hosted by Lee Mack who later shared a flat with Julian and Noel and played Graham on The Mighty Boosh radio show). I therefore had to make them meet between those dates. [Youtube video of a young Julian on GAS shown above.] 

It's set in summer as a contrast to them going to the Afterlife in the cold of November. June is the sixth month and the month of Gemini – both ruled by The Twins tarot card, which is all about love and soulmates. June is also said to be the month of marriage, so it seemed like the best choice from a narrative viewpoint.

First Meeting
The first meeting between Julian and Noel in the real world didn't happen at a stand up gig in London. They met at a stand up gig in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire where Noel went to college. I don't know where they met, but maybe at the Swan Theatre, which is a comedy club there founded in 1992.

I fictionalised this in Between Life and Death as the comedy gig where Julian and Noel almost met and should have met, except that Julian ran off and jumped in the lake instead. However in the story, this incident takes place in the city where Julian attended university (in real life, Reading; in the story, is never named although Reading still fits. Meh ... it's basically Reading).

Although in Between Life and Death Noel is at the first gig as Julian's fan and is inspired by his performance to go into comedy himself, in real life they were both doing stand-up by then. However, Noel was very much the less experienced of the two. I'm pretty sure the older Julian would have thought of him as just a kid.

In this chapter, I tried to recreate this first meeting by having them both perform on the same stage on the same night. Noel really did go on before Julian and he wasn't expecting anything much from Noel, but to his consternation Noel was really good. After that, Julian actually didn't want to go on after Noel and it put him in a bit of a bad mood! I tried to show Julian being surprised, impressed and also put out by it.

Two things are known for certain about Julian and Noel's first conversation. The first is that Julian asked Noel if he had his hair on backwards (what a flirt). The second is that Julian ran around pretending to catch Noel's words in a butterfly net, which is honestly rather sweet.

Much of the dialogue is taken from Julian and Noel's reminisces of their first meeting, which has a sort of legendary feel to it that I did not want to mess with very much. It is not always clear from interviews if these words are exactly what they said at the time, or a creative reinterpretation of what they said. And in turn I've creatively reinterpreted it myself.

As an example, when they are asked how they became friends, Noel always says, "Our boots fell in love and walked towards each other." A lovely and whimsical way to describe attraction. Although this is something he said later, I made it something that Noel says jokingly to Julian in the bar. I think he did actually approach Julian and point out that their comedy styles were quite similar as a hint to their compatibility.

One rather scathing review I received said they didn't think Julian and Noel in the story were much like the real Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Well they are much younger for a start, just a couple of college kids ... oh and let me think – IN THE AFTERLIFE!!!!!! A place where you cannot lie and are pushed into being the best version of yourself. Maybe that could account for it?

It's definitely unfair criticism for this chapter at least, because it is as closely modelled on the real Julian and Noel's depiction of themselves as I could manage. Almost every line of dialogue between Julian and Noel is taken from their own testimony and recollections of the event. Rant over.

The Setting
The story never identifies it by name, but the pub where Julian and Noel are doing their comedy routines is The Hen and Chickens Theatre Bar in Highbury, North London [photo in illustration]. It has a bar downstairs and a small performance area upstairs. I downloaded a map of the pub from their website so I could get the action right, and also used photos of the bar for inspiration.

After winning the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1998, The Mighty Boosh developed their stage show at the Hen and Chickens. They put on a performance every Monday night, inviting all their friends to come, in order to hone the script further based on audience feedback.

There's a little nod to that in this chapter because both Julian and Noel come with their friends to help form the audience, which is a very common thing to do in comedy circles. Noel also says that he sees the audience as a group of friends you take on an adventure – I think I did once hear Noel say something like this.

It's such an iconic part of The Mighty Boosh legendarium that I put the theatre in without ever saying its name. However, if you look at the illustration for the chapter in Between Life and Death, it is a photo of the Hen and Chickens and you can see part of the name across the top. Little Easter egg for the fans. For the chapters set in the real world, I used photos put through an art filter rather than digital fantasy art.

(The Mighty Boosh originally performed their stage show while preparing for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at the De Hems pub, a historic Dutch restaurant and bar in the Chinatown area of Westminster. At the time, the De Hems had a comedy club called the Oranje Boom Boom Comedy Cabaret. I'm just putting this in so the two things don't get confused.)

Noel Reality Check
The physical description of Noel in this chapter is not really accurate for 1996. After being a cute kid, attractive teen, and cool college student, he went through a bit of an awkward phase as he adjusted to adult life. However, once he teamed up with Julian he soon managed to find his look. I've based his description on his college days, which fits in with the first meeting in Buckinghamshire, and which after all were only the year before this chapter.

Noel really did travel around with a big group of attractive art college girls who attended all his performances. Julian admits it was a major factor in gaining his attention!

It is my idea that Noel and Julian's first serious conversation would be very professional in tone. Noel might act like a fey child living in a magical land of golden bubbles, but he is extremely practical, hard-working, and obsessive about getting details right. I think this is what would have attracted Julian to working with him – of course he would want a comedy partner with looks, charm and talent, but only if they were backed up with something solid.

Noel didn't drink alcohol at this period of his life, and I wrote that he was drinking orange juice at the bar. Then I worried orange juice was too generic a non-alcoholic drink – did it seem authentic? I combed through hours and hours of interviews until finally I heard Noel mention drinking orange juice because he couldn't have alcohol. Phew. Why I can blithely change dates, places and appearances without turning a hair but somehow have to fact check orange juice like the whole story will collapse if it's wrong I do not know.

Julian Reality Check
Simon mockingly calls Julian "Business Barratt" - this is a term that Noel and other cast members of The Mighty Boosh show used to tease Julian. In theatre lingo, business means all the non-vocal parts of a stage performance, and apparently it's something Julian takes very seriously! This was probably a sign he was destined to become a professional actor.

Boosh Reality Check
The line from Julian joking that he'll take Noel on as his apprentice comes from The Mighty Boosh TV show, where Howard/Julian insists that Vince/Noel is his apprentice at the zoo – Vince always denies this vigorously. It's implied in the story that the line in the show must have been inspired by this conversation, and for all I know, it was!

Simon and Clare
Although Julian does have several friends named Simon and Clare, the characters in the story aren't based on them or have any connection. I just picked common names from that era. I made Simon significantly shorter than Julian to ensure he wasn't assumed to be Simon Farnaby, who played the roles of Marcus Hoffman and Harold in The Mighty Boosh TV show. Simon Farnaby is about the same height as Julian. 

Simon is there to show that Julian has grown more comfortable with his bisexuality although he hasn't fallen in love with a man. There was a lot of friends of both sexes getting pretty friendly backstage with and around The Mighty Boosh so I don't think I have invented anything particularly unbelievable or scandalous. Julian got close to enough male friends to make Noel jealous.

Clare's name was originally Lucy, but once Lucy Stone (obliviablack) started reading Between Life and Death I felt weird about it and changed her name. I feel like it was a natural swap as both Lucy and Clare were popular names in the UK in the 1970s and have very similar meanings - "light" and "bright".

Simon and Clare represent Julian's friends that he had before he met Noel. When they first became friends and comedy partners, Noel would come over to Julian's flat nearly every night and they'd spend hours shut up in his bedroom writing scripts and making costumes – sometimes in bed together to keep warm.

Noel said he often wondered what Julian's flatmates thought, bringing home a younger guy (who looked much younger than his age) and having him in his bedroom all the time, only emerging for frequent cups of tea. Julian seems to have been magnificently unconcerned about their opinions, and I wanted to capture that same feeling with Simon and Clare – that he no longer cares what they think now his whole focus is on Noel.

Write What You (Do and Don't) Know
Fanfiction offers the chance to write about your fandom obsessions to your heart's content, but I have to admit this chapter in particular was a lot of work. It not only required a huge amount of research that would help the characters seem plausible both for the real world and the fictional soulmate story underpinning it, but still had to be formed into a coherent and hopefully somewhat entertaining narrative. No wonder I stick to fantasy most of the time!