★★★★ : Why comedian Ross Noble won’t panic over political correctness impact on comedy

Katy Perry once branded a comment he made as “mildly racist”, but improv master Ross Noble isn’t panicking over the impact of political correctness on comedy.

It was a killer moment. Ross Noble was on The Graham Norton Show politely listening to Katy Perry talking about her 20 million Twitter followers.

Noble innocently noted that her global audience might include Chinese children, a comment Perry regarded as “mildly racist”.

Noble shut her down soundly.

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“She went ‘racist’ and I said ‘what? Because I mentioned a country?’,” Noble recalls. “‘Shall we go out for some non-specific Asian food?’”

That was back in 2012 when instant labelling wasn’t the thing it is now, where almost every public utterance must be qualified.

Ross Noble is performing at the 2019 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

But are things getting so crazy even comics such as Noble are have trouble keeping pace?

“Wow, that is a big question,” says Noble. “This will not be a funny answer!”

Now there’s something you don’t often hear from Noble, who, at 42, has just clocked up 28 years as a stand up, his reputation as one of the world’s improv masters as indelible as his trademark tresses.

“There’s this idea that political correctness has gone too far, that everyone’s having to be incredibly guarded about what they’re saying and that the world’s gone mad,” he says.

“But actually, it’s more to do with the fact that, with social media, people have only had a voice for a very short time.”

“The internet has given the most terrible views you could possibly imagine a voice, but equally, it’s given a voice to people who are saying ‘you know what? That’s not acceptable’.”

The impact PC is having on comedy is still being felt, but while the ground is shifting, Noble insists there is no reason to panic by banning voices or enforcing speech codes.

“I’m not someone who’s throwing his arms up in the air and saying, ‘Oh, the world’s gone crazy!’.

“We’re just figuring it out. Same as when the printing press came along. We had to work out what those rules were as well.”

With his family and children now settled in rural Victoria, Noble (born in Newcastle, England) is still going through the arduous process of becoming a permanant resident.

“It’s not easy. There’s a lot of paperwork to fill in,” he says with a chuckle.

The move isn’t based on any disaffection, unlike with John Cleese, who loudly left last November over his disappointment with the government and media.

“Britain’s great, it’s quite divided at the moment,” Noble says.

“If you took the two places and went ‘this is what Britain has to offer and this is what Australia has to offer’ and you ranked those as equal, it’s just the weather here! That’s the diplomatic way of putting it.”

REVIEW: ROSS NOBLE, HUMOURNOID

Rating: ★★★★

Reviewer: Jim Schembri

“Too Daft to be Offensive” are the words Ross Noble wants chiselled on his gravestone, a perfect precis given the raucous love he was shown by about 2500 adoring fans of his improvisational mastery.

Among his topics were: George Pell’s chimp; Lionel Richie’s perverted song lyrics; the indignity of playing minigolf in high winds; Eric Clapton’s guitar kittens; crank-operated mobile phones; John Travolta’s new film Ass-On; life drawing classes that go wrong; the use of tarpaulins in home births; how best to have sex with a person who is a fluid … and so on.

Clearly at the top of his game, Noble is a comic Catherine wheel of ad libs and surreal comic visions, his only request of fans being that they play along with his high-energy nonsense. And turn off their mobile phones.

Ross Noble, Humournoid, Palais (two shows only; 2019 Melbourne comedy festival run has finished).