Killing joke

Ross Noble has had a late night. Ordering a Diet Coke along with his breakfast, he explains it’s “to get my caffeine levels up, I need it!”

Not a Red Bull man, then?
“It’s funny you should say that!” Noble says, showing me a Red Bull on the front of his backpack. “I did this Red Bull race called the Romaniacs last year. If you finish you get a medal and a bag. I got this. It’s an off-road motorcycle race. It’s all about extreme endurance. Five days of ten hours a day up rivers and jumping off cliffs and stuff. Pretty intense.”
When the bike-loving Newcastle native moved to Australia in 2004 with his wife Fran, he enjoyed riding around his 100-acre farm, 20 miles outside Melbourne. But in 2009, home, farm and precious bikes were reduced to cinders after bush fires devastated his local town.
“It was one of those things where, even though I lost my home, it was a much bigger, more horrible tragedy where loads of people died. To be honest, no matter what anybody tells you, losing all your possessions isn’t some amazing John Lennon ‘Imagine no possessions’ moment – you have to choose to do that! Freeing yourself of material goods sounds so beautiful and Zen. If it happens without your permission it’s not the same as just getting rid of everything. And it’s not even the stuff, it’s that you’ve lost your entire lifestyle overnight. Everything is completely changed.”
Losing his home and treasured possessions – and very nearly his family – forced Noble to think about the greater meaning of life.
“My wife didn’t believe in God. after that. She said to me, ‘Surely you must think that some greater force is looking after you?’ Actually, I felt the complete opposite! If anything, it confirmed to me that life is the most random series of events. And that goes for small things like our day-to-day decisions right back to the Big Bang and the chances of this very planet being created. It’s all just a series of beautiful, momentous and occasionally “My wife didn’t believe in God. after that. She said to me, ‘Surely you must think that some greater force is looking after you?’ Actually, I felt the complete opposite! If anything, it confirmed to me that life is the most random series of events. And that goes for small things like our day-to-day decisions right back to the Big Bang and the chances of this very planet being created. It’s all just a series of beautiful, momentous and occasionally terrifying, coincidences.”
He laughs.
“God, this makes me sound like a right pot-head, doesn’t it? We should be in a dorm room somewhere with a black light and a joint! ‘The cosmos, man, it’s all happening…’”
He used to call himself an alternative comedian but isn’t sure what that means anymore.
“People from the so-called ‘alternative’ circuit have started doing game shows or reality television or whatever. The ‘alternative’ has sort of now become the mainstream,” he muses. “The problem is that we haven’t quite got to the point where there’s been a second backlash. There hasn’t been a punk rebellion against that. We’re in weird place. Russell Brand’s a classic example. He came along and made a name for himself as a TV presenter and tabloid sensation, doing spin-offs of Big Brother and all that. Suddenly he was ‘the new, quirky comic’ – when, really, he was just a funny television presenter. And now he does stand-up, and is in mainstream Hollywood films. Not that I’m slagging him off. It’s an example of how everything’s changed. No-one’s quite sure of what the rules are.”
He’s been following Brand’s lead and getting into film. Noble takes the lead in Irish director Conor McMahon’s outrageous, incredibly gory comedy horror Stitches. Noble plays Stitches, a dodgy and dysfunctional clown killed while performing at a child’s birthday party. Years later, when the children have grown into unruly teens, Stitches returns from the grave to wreak revenge.
“My favourite kill is probably when Stitches cuts somebody’s stomach open, takes out his guts, inflates it like a balloon, crafts it into a balloon animal dog and then approaches the kid with the dog, going, ‘Woof woof!’ That’s not even the kill. Something mad happens with a balloon pump, but you’ll have to watch the film to see that!”

Stitches is in cinemas from October 26.