KEY POINTS:
What's comedian Ross Noble, who is TimeOut's favourite rambler, thinking?
CRICKET
Can't stand it. Think it's the dullest sport alive, and if you're English, people just assume that you care. Cricket is just like watching a bunch of blokes standing in a park. When I'm watching sport
I want to see something that is a spectacle. With cricket, it's just a lot of blokes who can hit a ball quite well. If the ball was on fire, a flaming ball, and they were wearing paraffin-soaked boiler suits then it would better. You know, like if the Ashes were actually the remains of the people who played the game, then it would excite me. I'd watch that every week.
SHANE WARNE
I've got to be very careful with Shane Warne because he's the Australian Lady Di. But slightly less promiscuous. This is my problem though, he's an amazing athlete, he's achieved a load of stuff, but I always get really angry with people who cheat on their wives. I saw an interview with him and he said, "Well, I've made some mistakes and I have to live with them". They're not mistakes, they're only mistakes because you got caught. It's not a mistake that, "Whoops, I've accidentally shagged someone". A mistake is leaving your mobile phone on top of the car.
NEW ZEALAND
I'm coming over a bit earlier and hiring a motorbike because hopefully the weather is going to be a bit nicer. I've always been in New Zealand when the weather's been utterly miserable. I keep seeing these adverts on the TV and there's all these people standing on beaches and doing extreme sports. I'm like, "Bullshit". I think you'll find a lot of people huddled in cafes.
EATING SHEEP TESTICLES
Ah, we've all had nights like that. The one thing Kiwis in general should be trying to avoid is people saying, "Oh yeah, you like having sheep's balls in your mouth?" I'm not a big fan of stereotypes in general but I have actually done gigs in New Zealand and made a point of not doing sheep jokes, and people came up to me afterwards and say, "You know, you would've got big laughs with sheep jokes, don't ya?"
MOTORBIKES
I get bored being on planes and in cars. I'm always looking for ways to turn my life into an exercise of entertaining myself. So [on the Fizzy Logic motorbike tour of New Zealand and Australia] I just thought why spend all the time on the road in boring modes of transport when I could ride my motorbike? It's a bit of pain Billy Connolly has done it. You get the comparison. But the difference is, and I'm not slagging him or anything, but he'd ride his bike to a place then fly somewhere. But with what I'm doing, it's literally a road trip of about 27,000kms. So it's a bit more hardcore, really.
COMEDY TABOOS
I think it's all about context. You can talk about any subject if it's in the right context. I think the reason why we have a lot of problems in the world is the fact people won't talk about things. I don't want to offend anyone and anyone who goes out there to break all the taboos is probably a bit of a dickhead. There's a lot of people who hear certain things and hear certain words and instantly go, "You can't say that.' And, well, you can because it's the opinion behind what you're talking about which makes something wrong or not. It's about context.
LIFE, IN GENERAL
My basic philosophy is not making any hard and fast rules about what I think. There's no black and white, there are shades of grey, and that makes me sound like a racist.
* Ross Noble, the British-born/Australian-based comedian, is touring New Zealand with his Fizzy Logic show. He's travelling by motorbike and doing four shows starting at Auckland's Bruce Mason Centre on February 8.
