Ross Noble? Not quite a household name, but he’s well on the way to becoming one. Dedicated to stand up, he’s been a slave to the discipline from the age of 15, busy honing his skills in the art of making people laugh. Easy to talk to, he’s an interviewer’s dream, effortlessly throwing in jokes to make the chat flow easily. During our conversation I mentioned his wife and he threw me a one liner, “Well I basically shag a 1950s milkman”.… Not funny? Well it had me in the aisles, and that’s not easy to do!
He’s one of these comedians who’s been around for a while. Well known by those ‘in the know’, you might hear his name whispered in the back room of a pub, or hear a snippet of him making light on some Radio 4 comedy programme. It’s not until you do some research and find he’s been consistently filling two to three thousand seat venues both here and in Australia that you begin to realise how good he is. He may not be as ‘popular’ or as ‘famous’ as Robin Williams, but does he care? “It’s a good way to look at life, some people are really excited and others just couldn’t give a shit. You can ask somebody and they’ll know exactly who you are, then there’ll be someone who won’t. The great thing about that is I’ve got the best of both worlds. It means I can tour around, do shows, fill big theatres and sell my DVDs but I don’t have any of the downside of being well known. People know me for doing what I do.”
A gangly man leaping about the stage, seamlessly flitting from one subject to another, his persona fills the biggest auditorium. Magnetic to watch, there are no boring moments here, no time to draw breath. Completely unscripted, he takes his cues from the audience, “I once walked out and someone had left some homemade biscuits on stage, like a Women’s Institute gift. And someone once threw six boxes of Maltesers on the stage, just because I’d made a passing reference. I was talking about cheese and someone threw some cheese. I do make the point on my last DVD that I should be making jokes about Ferraris, someone might just throw the keys up on the stage.”
I compared his lifestyle to that of being in a band, travelling around from city to city, socialising, spending time in bars and hanging out drinking.
“No I never drink actually, never bothered. The problem is, if you’re trying to do stand up you can’t have a drink before you go on because it takes the edge off, so if you’re looking at getting on stage for 10 at night when you’ve finished there isn’t really time after unless you go somewhere. I was always working, and I never thought it wise to become a sociable lunchtime drinker and then the next thing you know you’re on your back in a park. You very rarely find a middle ground.”
Spending his free time in pubs and bars is the last thing he wants to do, especially since he doesn’t drink, but he understands that people like a beer or two and it’s part of the ‘comedian culture’ to be around alcohol. I asked him about 24 hour pub openings, he figured it was a good thing. “People will stay in the pub till they’ve fallen asleep, we’re gonna see city centres just full of very sleepy people. I think the only downside is that we’re gonna have to provide public beds so that people can come out of the pub and have a nice lie down. They’re not gonna be pissing in the streets cause they’ll be too sleepy, they’ll just fall over and piss on their trousers. It all works out you know”.
Away from work, Ross, like most of us, values family life. It’s important for him to be there for his partner, but I was curious to know how he kept his ego in check, when everyone around him is constantly telling him how wonderful he is. “That’s the thing with stand up is you’re only as good as your last gig. I’m sure if you interviewed someone like Billy Connolly he wouldn’t be sitting there saying ‘Oh yes, I know what I’m doing, it’s all in the bag’. Every time you walk out to meet an audience you have to do it, you have to make those people laugh. It only exists in the moment. You can put your work on DVD or whatever but you never get to the point where you say ‘Oh I’m a big man on campus now!’ That stops you from doing that.”
A man on the up, he comes across as a genuine down to earth kinda guy, a working class kid from the council houses of the rugged north east. So then, ‘Is all that glitters gold?’ I ask. He answered me in a way that is typical Ross Noble, spontaneous, quick-witted and observant to the point of ridicule! “No! Clearly because that doesn’t take into account actual glitter that people use on greeting cards and the like, so that’s very near to glittery and yet has absolutely no precious metal quality whatsoever. So I might say yes, other than glitter…”
Ross’s DVD, ‘Sonic Waffle’, is out now.
Hendricks