No flamin' joke

Geordie surrealist Ross Noble comes to the Kilkenny Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in two weeks. He tells BRIAN BOYDhow he and his family escaped the recent Australian bush fires that destroyed their home – and totally wrecked his Star Wars collection

EARLIER this year, forest fires tore across the Australian state of Victoria, killing more than 180 people and destroying more than 1,000 homes. “It was the biggest natural disaster in Australian history,” says Ross Noble. “The damage caused was 60 times that caused by the Hiroshima bomb.”

Noble knows quite a bit about the forest fires – he and his family were lucky to escape with their lives. His beloved farmhouse just north of Melbourne was burnt to the ground, but many of his neighbours perished in the fires. He was performing in Melbourne when the fires came, and his wife and young child survived only because they were leaving their dogs off with a friend before making a trip to Europe.

As he sits in a Dublin hotel ahead of a show at the Olympia Theatre, Noble is clearly still stunned by what happened. “Everything – every single thing – just went up in flames. My wife didn’t even have her glasses with her when she went out. All I have, as in everything I now own, is in the suitcase I have upstairs in my room.”

Recently voted 10th in a Channel 4 list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics (and many would put him in the top five), Noble does talk about the fires in his current show, Things, but only selected aspects: "The only thing I can do about it on stage is to talk about how my treasured set of original Star Warfigures from the 1970s melted," he says. "The rest really isn't suitable."

He knows it will take him a long time to process what really happened – not just the loss of his home and all his belongings but also what happened to his neighbours. “It’s just a terrible, terrible, terrible thing. I remember reading at the time that the Pope was praying for the bushfire victims and just thinking that’s great, our houses have burnt to the ground, people have lost their lives and you’re lighting candles for us.

“As I said, I don’t really talk about what happened in the show, but I usually have a question-and-answer bit at the end and it comes out then. People want to know what happened.”

Originally from a small town outside Newcastle, Noble set up home in Australia after touring the country many times as a performer. Now 32 and rendered homeless by the fires, he doesn’t know if he’ll move back to Australia. He has been touring almost constantly since he lost his home.

He hasn’t previously talked about the fires reporters. But then, he doesn’t do many interviews. “I remember there were always three distinct types of interview,” he says. “There was the bang-bang one, where the people just wanted to know where you were playing and a bit about yourself, usually done by someone who had no idea who you were. You’d always get the ‘so how would you describe your comedy?’ question and I’d always reply, ‘Isn’t that your job?’

“The second one would always begin with ‘I know you’ve been asked these questions loads of time before, but . . . ’ and they’d be of the ‘how much of your material is prepared and how much is made up as you go along’ type. Then you’d get the ‘you’re a different type of comic, so let’s do something different here – let’s talk about cats’ interview”.

Noble is undoubtedly one of the most talented performers of his generation, but his shows seem like unstructured casual chats. He can brilliantly riff off an ad-lib for a good hour. It all seems so effortless.

“There are obviously some prepared bits in the show, but I mightn’t get to all of them or I might change their order around or even improvise within them. I get distracted or something suggests itself or an audience member might have a weird haircut or something. I do have some idea of where I want to end up but then all these tangents tangle things up”.

The term “streams of consciousness” gets bandied around a lot by reviewers, but the Ross Noble live experience is truly a shock-and-awe event. Shock at just how verbally dexterous he is, and awe at the fact that you can’t see the join between the scripted material and what has just been ad-libbed. But just don’t use the word “art”: “If people are selling beer and crisps while you’re doing it, it’s probably not art” he says.

Despite his big and loyal live following, Noble still cherishes his cult status. “You get the same people in the same seat night after night on a tour. And then there’s these weird traditions, like at the Edinburgh Fringe, where during the interval people put their shoes up at the front of the stage. I’ve always liked the fact that people seem to end up at one of my shows through word of mouth and not because they’ve seen me on the telly.”

He does do the occasional television spot, but the format just isn’t something that suits his free-wheeling, mildly surreal style. “It can help to shift tickets, but, for me, it’s all about the live show and the fact that I’ve been able to tour the Scottish islands and these really remote Australian towns. The problem with TV comedy now is you get all these panellists on any amount of shows and there still is that thing out there that by being a stand-up and getting on to television, you can get a TV presenting job – like it’s a career move or something.”

A career was something Noble knew he would never have. Having dyslexia meant that at age 11 he still had difficulties reading and writing. “I remember thinking back then that I had to do something that didn’t rely on reading and writing.”

So young Ross weighed up his options, namely stuntman/bounty hunter/kite maker. It was about this time that he realised the one thing he could do very well was juggle. He and a friend developed an act juggling on unicycles and he knew he was destined for a life with the circus. That was until he won some tickets to a local comedy show and quickly “forget the circus. This is what I should be doing.”

Noble quickly conquered Edinburgh, saw his shows transfer to London’s West End, and became one of the biggest box-office names around. He has managed all of this while still retaining the respect and admiration of his peer group.

Noble will perform six times during the five-day Carlsberg Cat Laughs festival in Kilkenny (May 28th to June 1st). “It’s a festival I love doing because of the way it’s set up,” he says. I’ll be on with three to four other acts – which should mean more mayhem than usual.”

Feline groovy: old cats, new cats and cool cats at Kilkenny

Many of the performers at this year's Carlsberg Cat Laughs you'll already know – Des Bishop, Jason Byrne, Tommy Tiernan, Andrew Maxwell, Colin Murphy, Ardal O'Hanlon, David O'Doherty. While their shows will sell out quickly, there are plenty of really interesting new faces to explore.

Top among these is Hans Teeuwen, who is something of a comedy superstar in his native Netherlands. Very polished , and a bit controversial, he's well worth a look. Tasmanian Hannah Gadsbyis quick-witted, with a neat line in self-deprecation. Big things are expected of her, so this is your chance to get in early. New Yorker Alonzo Boddenis a razor-sharp comic who has made waves on the US comedy circuits.

And do try to take a look at the deadpan Welsh act Rhod Gilbert, who came close to winning last year's If.com Edinburgh Fringe award (losing out to David O'Doherty in the final reckoning). Gilbert takes the most banal subjects and sprinkles them with magic comedy dust.

Perhaps the best one-liner comic in the business, Milton Jonesmakes a welcome return to the festival, while Andrew Lawrenceis a delightfully dysfunctional entertainer and a little bit scary too (in a good way).

Don't miss Barry Murphyhosting a special YouTube Tennis show. Murphy and Karl Spainwill also host a special screening of the FA cup final. And if it's top-drawer comedy film you're after, there will be a screening of Mark Doherty's excellent A Film with Me in It.

www.carlsbergcatlaughs.com, www.rossnoble.co.uk