Ross Noble has some excellent life advice – if you ever get the chance to walk out of a giant model of your own head, then take it.
After all, that’s what he will be doing every night when his Humournoid tour returns to the UK in the New Year, starting with Aberdeen’s Music Hall on January 14.
It’s just part of the elaborate sets that the comedian, writer and actor loves to open his stand up shows with.
“This is an absolute doozy this time. It’s my head but giant, probably four or five metres high, split in two, then the two halves are joined by wires with circuit boards inside with flashing lights and I literally walk out of my own head as lights shoot into the audience.
“And then I never mention it,” said Ross, laughing and adding he loves it when he asks for questions from the audience at the end of his show and someone asks: “What’s all that about.”
Ross Noble on his ‘playful’ humour
He said: “If you had a job where you got to have a giant head of yourself and walk through it, you would. And if you’re the sort of person who had the opportunity to walk out of your own giant head and you said ‘no’ then I don’t think this show is for you.”
It’s a great example of Ross’s sense of humour that has been described as surreal and random, but which he prefers to define as “playful”.
“Playing with ideas, playing with the audience, playing around with stand up is done and the expectation of how stand-up is done. If you are the sort of person who takes life and then plays, then you will like the show.”
And, returning to the theme of the set, Ross said Humournoid is all about letting people into his head and seeing the world through his eyes for a bit.
“That’s the highfalutin version, but the honest answer is it’s just me dicking about and having fun. And that’s the one thing the pandemic brought into focus is that the thing that’s brilliant about stand-up is it’s the only form of entertainment that is always alive,” he said.
“It only works on that night, in that room and the pandemic brought that into focus with everyone just watching things passively and that (live show) went away. But it’s mainly me dicking about.”
Ross, who was speaking from his home in Melbourne, Australia, said there’s still a bit of time to decide what’s going to be “inside his head” by the time he arrives in the UK next month.
Furious at Boris’s ‘party nonsense’
“The really annoying thing is that – and he’s done it again – is Boris and all this crazy party nonsense,” he said.
“All of that coming out while I’m on a break on the other side of the world? I’m absolutely furious… I would get 40 minutes out of that.”
Ross, who is also a regular on comedy panel shows such as Have I Got News For You, said he came up with the name Humournoid to reflect a bit of a sci-fi feel (see the flashing giant head), with a mash-up between concepts like humanoid and mechanoid, but meshed with comedy.
“Trouble is once I said it out loud it sounds like haemorrhoid. But it looks cool on a poster,” he said, joking he hopes no one turns up at the show looking for some sort of a cure for “problems downstairs”.
However, when it comes to medical matters, Ross said he actually landed in A&E on one of his previous trips to Aberdeen in the acting strand of his career in the musical The Producers at His Majesty’s.
“I twisted my ankle when I was doing the show and ended up in the local hospital, with a massive elephant foot,” he said. “It was one of the best medical experiences I have ever had in my life.
Aberdeen best for medical mishap
“I went in there, they checked me out, sorted me out and got me out the door. Every time I go to Aberdeen, I think if there’s a place for me to have some kind of medical mishap, it’s here.”
The Granite City is just one stop on Ross’s extensive Humournoid tour and he admits that sometimes the constant life on the road can be gruelling.
“But it doesn’t matter how tired, how ill, or whatever is going on in your life, as soon as you get into that theatre and hear the sound of the audience, it’s like you get that injection of excitement,” he said.
“Whenever anyone is complaining about their job and it’s not for them, I always say, get yourself a job where a couple of thousand people cheer when you start. That will lift you.”
Ross said his own experience of lockdown gave him some time to get ideas that had been swirling around out of his head and down onto paper. He he hopes to see at least one become a reality in the next year or so.
How to get tickets for Ross Noble
“If you were to basically take everything I’ve done, like, stand-up, musicals, horror films, and put all of this things together, that’s what I’m working on,” he said. “Put it this way… a man in a yellow hat, a yellow bowler hat.”
Before any of that, though, is his gig at the Music Hall.
Ross said: “Come along, get ready to play and be in the moment. Let’s all be in a room together and make the most of it, while we can. Who knows what’s round the corner.”
For more information and tickets for Ross Noble in Humournoid at the Music Hall go to aberdeenperformingarts.com
You might also like…