Ross Noble's Brain Dump will drop on York first on autumn tour

Noted for spontaneous stand-up patter that spins off on surrealist tangents, Noble has picked the title of his 15th touring show from a customer review on Amazon for one of his DVDs. "They wrote, 'This is just like a massive brain dump', and I thought, 'Oh yeah, that's exactly what my stuff is! I'll have that'."

Noble, who will turn 40 on June 5, may base his storytelling comedy around improvisation but he reckons the risk in his act is "all relative". "It’s like driving a car; after 25 years you don't get in a car and go, 'What if this goes wrong?'. If you hit a few bumps in the road you just think, 'Oh, this is fun, let's bounce around for a bit!’," he says, confident that his audience will roll with it after two decades of Noble comedy.

"The main change since I started is that, because I've built up this really loyal audience, there's more of a shorthand. When I first started, if I was talking about something a bit left-field people would go, 'Oh god, where's he going with this?', whereas now that's what people want. They go, 'Oh right! Where's he going with this?'."

Noble's CV now embraces horror movie roles too, such as in Stitches, but have his comedy skills proved useful? "It's definitely easier for a stand-up to do straight acting than an actor to do comedy. In Stitches – it sounds mad because I was playing a killer clown – but I wanted to play it as truthfully as possible. I didn't want people to go, 'Oh, that's just Noble dressed as a clown'. I’ve just filmed another horror, and that’s a straight horror film; there are no laughs in it."

Ross Noble: "Oh, this is fun, let's bounce around for a bit!"

Mind you, when it comes to choosing which was weirder, playing a murderous clown, or going on a date with Harold Bishop in the Australian comedy It’s A Date?, Noble decides: "Oh, the date. That was my idea, so I only have myself to blame. It was a mate of mine’s show; he asked me to write and be in an episode.

"Afterwards I realised that I could have picked pretty much any Australian actress to date; I've could've written myself a love scene. But when he asked who I wanted to go on a date with I said, 'Ian Smith, who plays Harold Bishop'. We laughed about that for about an hour, but he agreed to it, and then the next thing you know I'm on a set sat opposite him."

Noble, who cut his comedy teeth in York as compere at the late Mike Bennett's Comedy Shack nights at The Bonding Warehouse, has since notched up 17 appearances on the BBC's topical panel show Have I Got News For You, an engagement he particularly enjoys. "I absolutely love it. I was still at school when the show started, so it was a really big deal when I first did it. It's still the top panel show on telly," he says. "Because it's been on for so long, it's got a really strong sense of what the show is; it's become very well defined."

On one occasion, Noble and team captain Paul Merton flunked every question to end up with zero points, and he has a confession to make. "We did it on purpose," admits Noble."I'd done the show so many times, so I jokingly said to Paul, 'Why don't we just see if we can score no points?'. It’s actually harder than you think, because when an obvious story comes up it's really hard not to say the answer. Charlie Brooker was on the other team, and at the end he said, 'I can't believe we won', and Paul went, 'Well, we can'."

Noble was ranked number ten in Channel 4’s poll of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups in 2007 but slipped a place in 2010. How come? "Ricky Gervais. When they did the first programme, he hadn't done stand-up. By 2010 he'd started, so he was put in the top ten, which pushed me to 11," he explains, deeming the poll to be "fair enough".

Ross Noble: "I take all those things with a pinch of salt"

"It was voted by the public, and he's popular. There are probably ten or 15 acts that nobody knew in 2007 and are now enormous, so if they do another one I'll probably end up at 25," says Noble.

He "wouldn't care, to be honest", if Channel 4 were to do another poll. "It's like those 100 sexiest men or women lists; it's never won by someone who works in a chip shop in Loughborough. So I take all those things with a pinch of salt," he says.

Through the years, Noble has built a loyal fanbase, one that has been known to leave him gifts on stage, but does he find that sweet or creepy? "Ninety nine per cent of the time it's very sweet and very flattering. Every now and then you get one where you go, 'Okaaaay… that's a little bit scary'."

Asked to pick the scariest, he says: "I was in New Zealand once, and I was on my phone to my wife. I put the phone down and it rang again. I thought it was her ringing back, so I went, 'Hi' and this voice said, 'Hello'. It was a complete stranger who had rung every hotel in Auckland pretending to be my girlfriend. That was a bit terrifying.

"The thing is, someone being a fan is very flattering, but there's a big difference between somebody liking your comedy and someone wanting to wear your skin as a suit."

Ross Noble: Brain Dump will be on tour from September 27 to December 17. Dates include York Barbican, September 27; Harrogate Royal Hall, October 1; Leeds Town Hall, November 30 and December 1; Hull City Hall, December 13. Box office: York, 0844 854 2757 or agttickets.com/york; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 376 0318; Hull, 01482 226655