“Oh, I’d forgotten about that!” Noble cries in his inimitable brogue. “That was pretty full on though, that roof collapse. All of the water that had gathered up there burst through to the electrics, and the electrical board exploded. So the theatre people there said, ‘Well, you might want to not let people in?’ like it was a question. But I thought, well, as long as its not on fire now, it should be alright.”
Noble’s live shows are renowned for being unpredictable beasts, which is really the very nature of improvised comedy. Yet his audiences themselves can be just as mysterious, and over the years he has worked out subtle ways of gauging just what kind of a crowd he might expect.
“You can tell. When the lights go down, there’s a noise that comes off the crowd but it’s also a feeling in the room – an anticipation. If you were there three nights running you might think the audience sounds exactly the same, but they’re totally different. Sometimes I’ll think of something and the audience will laugh right away, while sometimes there’s a beat before they get it. Then sometimes – and this is one of my favourite things – you get to a joke where rather than seeing the punchline, you give them the ingredients. Say you’ve been talking about a tiger hiding in a box. Or maybe a car bomb that’s about to go off, right? Two minutes later, you’re miming that you’re in a car and pretend to turn the key, you look down and go, “Oh no.” You’re not explaining the joke, you’re just doing it. All those elements that you’ve been leading up to come together.”
With so many upcoming gigs scheduled for Brain Dump, it’s safe to say that Australia has quite a sweet spot for Noble. He has been touring here for years, and even lived just outside of Melbourne for a time until a bushfire destroyed his family home and the Noble clan relocated to the UK. While his family were thankfully unhurt, it certainly put the comic’s life and fortunes in perspective. Nowadays his surrealist skills are unsurpassed, largely due to an acceptance of simply being himself.
“The mistake that people make starting out is that they’ll try and find a style. The trick is, let the style find you. The best comics are sort of themselves on stage, it’s just an extension. That’s just me in front of people showing off, but it’s me.”
It’s a personal philosophy that extends to others in the world of comedy, both new and established. At his core, Noble celebrates the idiosyncratic. Don’t mimic the easy laughs we’ve heard a thousand times before, don’t replicate your idols.
“You see these comics who desperately want to be Bill Hicks, and you just think, that’s not who you are,” says Noble. If you’re true to yourself and go out there, you’ll find out what kind of comedian you are.
BY ADAM NORRIS
