Talking Shop: Ross Noble

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The set for Noble's new show features an elaborate inflatable creature

Ross Noble has earned a reputation as a one of Britain's most effortlessly talented stand-up comedians.

His set changes every night, as the Geordie raconteur spins incredible, fantastical tales out of thin air. One reviewer called it "daydreaming aloud".

With a six-week West End residency on the horizon, the comedian is launching a TV series - Ross Noble's Australian Trip - which follows him on a motorcycle ride across Australia during his recent tour.

Along the way, he takes in the world's second-largest playable guitar, the giant potato of Wollongong and an emu car wash.

His circumnavigation of the country came just months after the 100-acre farm he owned with his Aussie wife Fran was destroyed in a bush fire, along with everything he owned.

The 33-year-old told the BBC how he has adjusted to life without material possessions - and why he didn't mind being compared to Billy Connolly.

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What exactly happened during the bush fires in February?

There are conflicting stories but, basically, we lost everything.

I was doing a warm-up gig and my wife and our baby left the house with the clothes they were wearing and a purse, and that was it. My wife left her car behind, so all we've got is my car, and the overnight bag I had with me. All other material possessions were destroyed.

What is the situation with insurance? Have you got somewhere else to live?

We're still looking for somewhere to live. I mean, we're staying somewhere, but it's a bit of a stop-gap measure until we can move on.

Ross has donated profits from sales of his tour programme to victims of the 2009 Victoria bush fires

You lost your collection of rare comedy paraphernalia and several vintage motorbikes. How do you feel about the material losses six months later?

There's many different emotions, depending on whether I need something. I'll still go: "I'd quite like to read that book oh, it's gone". But I'm still alive, so every cloud has a silver lining.

What inspired you to make a television series about Australia after all of that?

Mainly, it's because I'm into bikes. I've been travelling between gigs on my motorbike more and more and, because I was doing an Australian tour, I thought I should try to go all the way around as one big road trip. Once I was doing that, the obvious thing was to film it. It ended up being 26,000km!

There are inevitably going to be comparisons to Billy Connolly's World Tour Of Australia (a 1995 series that followed the Scottish comedian around Australia on a Harley Davidson trike).

I'd rather be compared to him than some of the other comics out there.

But that was a problem and one of the reasons why, originally, I didn't want to film it. But just because Jamie Oliver has got a cooking show, it doesn't mean Gordon Ramsay can't have one.

Which one are you in that analogy?

[Laughs] Clear off.

But my show is quite different. We made it the same way I do the stand-up. It's very much unplanned. We'd turn up to places, and whoever we met on the way and whatever we saw, that made it into the show.

So, imagine the Billy Connolly thing but remove anything of historic or cultural relevance. That's basically what it is.

The comedian is renowned for his ad-libbed flights of fancy

The transition from a huge road trip to a West End residency is quite a big one. Which do you prefer?

My friends keep saying: "Six weeks with six shows a week? That's a bit full on". But it's going to be really relaxing after five months of motorbiking. I can just walk down to the theatre every night and do it.

It's a tricky decision, because you could go off and do one night in a massive venue or you could do six weeks in a smaller venue, but it's good to mix it up.

Do you think comedy works in a big arena, though? It always seems like the jokes get lost in those echoing cavernous venues.

Well, I just did an arena tour in Oz and I did it in the round - with the stage in the middle - to about 10,000 people a night. If you normally play a 2,500-seat theatre, it was kind of the same. You just had a 2,500-seat theatre on your left, and another on your right, and one in front and one behind.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer recently criticised British comedy, saying it had "gone stale". Do you agree?

They were referring more to TV comedy than live stuff, I think. There are a lot of comics around now whose main focus is just to wear a suit and stand there - and a lot of their material is just bland.

But what doesn't get talked about is how even the most middle-of-the-road comics today have come up with their routines by themselves, you know? Before alternative comedy, a lot of comics relied on writers.

It does seem like the surrealist comedy that you and Eddie Izzard and Vic and Bob championed has been abandoned for more traditional, set-up/punchline routines. Jimmy Carr is probably the most obvious example...

Jimmy Carr is slightly different in that his subject matter is really not mainstream. But there does seem to be a trend of comics going back to the old, observational stuff because they know that grandmas are going to like it.

Grandmas or TV commissioning editors?

Well, yes, because of the whole Brand and Ross situation, people are wetting themselves nowadays.

Have you appeared on any panel games or TV shows since Ross and Brand? Do you get the impression that the censor's blade is falling more readily?

The only panel game I've done is Have I Got News For You and it's hard to know whether something has been cut because its subject matter is distasteful, or for legal reasons, or because there simply isn't time to put everything into the show. So the short answer is "I don't know".

Ross Noble was speaking to BBC News entertainment reporter Mark Savage.

The comedian's West End show, Things, runs at the Apollo Theatre in London from 14 September, and his latest live DVD, Nobleism, is out in November. Ross Noble's Australian Trip will be on Five later this month.