‘I think it’s just nice to turn your phone off and laugh with a load of other people’
Ross Noble is very, very tired. Halfway through an 85-date international tour of new stand-up show Humournoid, he’s jetlagged. EMMA COX spoke to him
I would normally start by asking what to expect from your tour, but maybe that’s hard to say as you improvise so much?
I can tell you one thing to expect. I’ve always been a fan of breaking away from the thing of a comedian just standing in front of a blank stage with a couple of lights, a stool and a table with some water on it. Now, if you can’t go two hours without a drink of water, there’s something wrong with you. If you go and see Phantom Of The Opera, he’s not on stage constantly swigging water, is he? So I don’t do that. I like to create massive sets. I’ve always loved the idea of this big, theatrical, rock and roll set and then just this bloke walking on and talking. So on the stage I’ve got a massive head, which is my head, and it’s connected by veins which are LED lights. It’s like a giant cyborg Total Recall version of my head, and I walk out through the two halves of my head. It’s totally unnecessary but it makes me laugh a lot. And then it’s whatever pops into my head after that.
I read a statistic that your shows are about 70 percent improvised, is that right?
I don’t know, I’ve never measured it! What I do is I go on stage at the beginning and improvise, then if something tickles me I might write it down and then the next night, I’ll go back to that idea. But I might go back to that idea and do it a bit differently. So it’s never quite the same. I like that white-hot heat of being in the moment.
Do you get nervous before going on stage? No, because there’s nothing to be frightened of. I think this applies to life as well: there’s no point worrying about what’s going to happen, you may as well just deal with it when it happens... just enjoy the moment you’re in.C ould you just write in the article, “At this
point, Ross got into a Lotus position and floated three feet in the air…”? I do think I’m best on stage when I’m playing. And some people might think this is an emotionally stunted, man-child way of looking at it but I think it’s nice to make everything about playing. Because if you do that, it doesn’t matter if you’re winning or losing, you’re just playing.
Has fatherhood changed your comedy?
It’s made me tired! In a sense, it has changed my comedy. I used to spend a lot more time daydreaming. I think having children focused me a little bit. I used to spend a lot of time in my own head but I check in with the real world a little bit more now, which you have to, because you don’t want your kids to die and all that.
You’ve been doing this since you were 15, which is nearly 30 years. How has comedy, or your comedy, changed in that time?
When I first started, it was the early 1990s and there were only four purpose-built comedy clubs back then. There were a lot of performance poets around and people would say, “Are you an alternative comedian?”. This idea of “alternative” comedy, what they meant was people like Ben Elton and French & Saunders… If you look at Jack Dee and Frank Skinner, they were the first wave of what you’d deem “alternative” comics who hosted programmes on mainstream, popular, primetime telly. Then there was another wave of Peter Kay, Jason Manford, John
Bishop: a whole swathe of northern comedians who suddenly became big mainstream stars who, along with Michael McIntyre, were hosting all of the big game shows and chat shows and stand-up shows on the telly. Or take Vic and Bob: they were as “alternative” as you could get, but then with Shooting Stars they became incredibly popular and mainstream. Acts like Little Britain or Harry Hill would never have appealed to a Saturday night audience ten years previously. What I’m saying is there are no lines drawn with comedy anymore. It can be quirky, and different, and still be on primetime telly. I’ve just ploughed my own furrow and done my own thing and that’s allowed me to do bits and bobs of interesting things, without having to become a gameshow host.
Which comedians do you like?
The most I’ve ever laughed with other comics was with Lee Mack and Johnny Vegas. We had an afternoon once in Ireland, we were doing Kilkenny Comedy Festival and the three of us were together. There was a woman there who had very small hands and she was being quite rude to us. I mentioned her small hands and the three of us were in hysterics for a good four hours. We just could not stop laughing. They are funny guys separately anyway, but put them together… My favourite comedian to watch is currently a Canadian guy called Norm MacDonald who has a really weird delivery. He’s very dry. He’s got a Netflix show called Hitler’s Dog, Gossip And Trickery. And he wrote a memoir that
Does your wife come to your tour?
She only comes to see me once a year. You do see some of the comedy WAGS and HABS going along to every gig but my wife can’t be arsed with that. She lives with me, she gets it all the time! She’ll sometimes bring the kids to a theatre near home for the soundcheck if it’s a new set to let them run around my giant head because they like that.
How do you find the actual travelling part of touring?
It’s boring and depressing if you just do your show, sit in the bar, then go to bed so I try and keep it fun. I’ve got a little crew of guys I’ve known for ages and we find stuff to do during the day. It depends where we are. When we were in Australia it was like a slightly more blokey version of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert. We’ll do stuff like find motocross tracks or forests to go off and have fun with some off-road biking. It’s exhausting but you’re full of adrenaline when you go on stage after a day doing that. Sometimes I’ll look down at my hands on stage and my fingers will be bleeding. Escape Rooms is always a popular one. You have to give it plenty of time though: you don’t want to be in an Escape Room an hour before you’re due on stage. We did one in Brisbane and we couldn’t find the entrance. You know it’s not a good start if you can’t even find the entrance to the Escape Room.
To sum up: why should people buy tickets for your show?
Because it’s not a passive show. I like to think of it as an experience. It’ll make you laugh but it’ll also enrich your life. Can you write, “He’s floating again, and he has a wry smile”? There’s so much entertainment these days. When I was a kid, the idea that I could one day access an archive of anything that’s ever been on telly or film, within seconds – that’s mad. I remember trawling through books to find information. If you had a certain hobby, you’d have to write to a certain shop and ask for a catalogue. Whereas we’re always on our phones now. So what I love about stand-up is it’s one of the few art forms where people actually come together in a room at the same time on the same night, with phones off, and feel like they’re part of something. It’s quite a rare thing these days. That’s what I try to do: create a feeling that we’re all in something together. Honestly, I think it’s just nice to turn your phone off and laugh with a load of other people. It’s that simple.
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See Humournoid at:
Leicester De Montfort Hall on Wednesday, April 29, demontforthall.co.uk, 0116 233 3111; Nottingham Royal Concert Hall on Thursday, May 7, trch.co.uk, 0115 989 5555; Buxton Opera House on Sunday, May 17, buxtonoperahouse.org.uk, 0129 872 190.