Funnyman Ross Noble defies bushfire pain for daughters

Comedian Ross Noble is sick of being asked to do weird shows but he had a serious reason for voicing a lizard in a new Australian children’s movie.

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Ross Noble is known as a comedian who has a delightfully wacky way of looking at the world — but it means he has to throw out most of the job offers that come his way.

“Stuff comes through all the time and 90 per cent of it, you go — ‘no chance’. Celebrity Tea Enemas? I don’t think so,” Noble says.

But he jumped at the chance to voice a character in new Australian children’s movie The Wishmas Tree.

“A children’s animated film made in Australia, playing a slightly unhinged but wise old lizard? Well, that ticks all the boxes,” he says.

Noble might still sound like a son of Newcastle in northern England (“most Australians don’t understand the north exists, they think I’m from Ireland!”) but he’s married to an Australian and just moved back here with their two daughters.

Comedian Ross Noble and his family are starting the next chapter of their lives in Australia.

It’s been a rough return for the Noble family thanks to our “Black Summer” of bushfires. They moved to the UK 10 years ago after a terrifying experience during Victoria’s Black Saturday in 2009, where Noble’s house in the town of St Andrews was destroyed.

“If we’d made one or two decisions slightly differently, my wife and newborn baby, or her parents — they would have definitely died,” a for-once serious Noble says.

“I lost my home and everything I owned but I still went, five minutes either way and I would have lost my family as well.”

After 10 years of living in the UK, Noble says the family moved back to a rural Australian property because he wanted his daughters to grow up Australia.

“Just after putting the deposit down, the fires broke out,” he says. “This isn’t really making for a hilarious story ... but I really hope that, as well as the immediate help, further down the line, people get the mental support they need and the circus doesn’t just move on.

“You are more affected mentally, in ways you wouldn’t think of.”

The 2009 Black Saturday fires devastated the communities around Ross Noble home in St Andrews. Picture: Darren Tindale

Noble says many of his neighbours died in 2009. Some families survived the fires but broke apart because of the trauma.

“By nature I’m an optimistic person ... (but) I still think about it, all of the time,” he says.

“Wow, that’s a bit heavy!”

So it’s perhaps not surprising he loves the environmental messages in The Wishmas Tree.

“People sometimes forget that, for our generation, climate change is not a new thing,” he says.

“It started with the hole in the ozone layer, then it went to the CFCs and getting rid of polystyrene ... so we’ve been introduced to it over time and I think that’s where some of the denial comes from.

“But our kids are growing up with this and what’s important is talking to them about it.”

He also likes the idea of doing something his children can watch.

“This might sound a bit twee but this is a proper, all-the-family-can-go-and-see-it film,” he says.

Noble voices Yarra, a strange old lizard who helps the hero of the story, Kerry the possum, on her quest to save everyone after her mistake kills off the precious Wishmas Tree.

Kerry the possum in a scene from The Wishmas Tree.

“On the surface he’s an Obi-Wan type of figure, a Gandalf, that kind of character and that really appealed,” he says.

While his voice is instantly recognisable, he does put on a different accent.

“I showed my kids a clip and they were like: ‘Oh, that’s one of the voices we know’ — like I was some sort of hack — ‘Oh, we’ve heard this character before in our bedtime stories’,” he says with a chuckle.

But, despite his reputation as a brilliant improvisational comedian, he says he stuck to the script.

“If you are playing yourself, it makes sense to follow your ideas,” he says. “But at the risk of sounding incredibly pretentious, you’ve got to do what’s right for the character. I like the discipline of (following the script). “That said, if they ask you to do 10 different versions of the line then that’s great!

“The kids have seen a couple of things that I’ve done but this is the first one where I can sit with them and watch it.”

Turns out his daughters, aged 11 and 7, aren’t always his biggest fans.

“The other day we were in the car and talking about Scar from the Lion King and how villains don’t see themselves as villains and my eldest daughter was like: ‘Can we not just enjoy the film?’,” he says.

Funnyman Ross Noble has no plane to pursue more movie roles.

“Ninety per cent of the time I do think I am here to make them laugh but this was a teaching moment and I was saying how Scar doesn’t think himself a villain, he thinks he would be a better king than Musafa but he doesn’t understand the circle of life.

“And my daughter says: ‘Can we turn the radio up please!’ ”

More recently they went on a tree climbing activity and Noble decided to explain to his daughter and her friend that the safety measures were necessary because they built the course by sending out a pack of monkeys with hammers and nails and letting them get creative.

“But, at the end of it, you’ve got a load of monkeys armed with hammers, which can be dangerous, which is why you have to wear helmets,” he explained.

Unsurprisingly, his daughter was not impressed by dad’s wackiness and he also admits her friend probably went home “utterly horrified, thinking this place is full of monkeys armed with hammers”.

Noble says his Wishmas Tree role is unlikely to see him making the switch from stand-up comedy to acting.

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“I have no deep desire of doing those bare-your-soul kind of things,” he says.

“The dashing romantic lead — I have no interest in that. But playing an alien, a lizard or a killer clown — lovely, I’ll have some of that!”

He would even cut his legendary long hair if the right part came along.

“I’m not wedded to the hair. Keeping it like this is just pure laziness,” he says.

“But if Disney rang me and said they’ve got a bit of a Star Wars film for me then I’d do it. Before I’d even put the phone down I’d have the kitchen scissors out and be chopping away.”

Noble’s improvisational comedy is justifiably famous for going down paths no other person could imagine, which, when pressed, he thinks could be down to his dyslexia.

“I’m not a neuroscientist — hard to believe, I know! — but I think in pictures, rather than words,” he says.

“If you’re a lawyer, or a detective, you’ve got the sort of brain that gathers up all sorts of information and mentally files it.

“I’ve got a head that takes that information and, rather than filing it, turns it into confetti and throws it around. You could say I’ve turned a disability into a way of making money!”

As to what’s next, Noble says don’t expect him to make an appearance on Celebrity Tea Enemas.

“Although I didn’t make that up!” he says. “People will say, how does he come up with these crazy ideas but that was real. Kim Wilde (1980s pop singer) and a comedian had a detox and an enema — maybe it wasn’t tea, maybe it was coffee ... anyway, it was a relaxing hot beverage that they had fired up their bums for people’s entertainment.”

That could even be the tagline for his next tour.

The Wishmas Tree is now screening

Originally published as Funnyman Ross Noble defies bushfire pain for daughters