![Russell Howard's humour is based in his witty impersonations of working-class British life. Picture supplied Russell Howard's humour is based in his witty impersonations of working-class British life. Picture supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/E9srhG6YCw3ZDt9UDADP4R/61f275a6-2bcb-4852-a4e1-fb304fb55847.jpeg/r0_0_3000_4505_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
THERE are moments on stage when time and preparation become irrelevant for English comedian Russell Howard.
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He's perfectly locked into the energy of the audience. He's in the pocket.
Rather than follow the perfectly-scripted jokes that he's refined and work-shopped, he's ad-libing. Flying by the seat of his pants. Anything could happen.
"When you see a surfer underneath the curve of the wave, it feels like that," Howard tells Weekender from his home in London.
"You're in that zone. It happens all the time in stand-up. It's electric.
"It's normally when something different has happened. I spilt water the other day at a gig in Ipswich and the crowd went ballistic.
"I'd written all these jokes, I thought long and hard about it, but the happiest moment was when the water was in a different place than it was supposed to be. It was on the table and now it's on the floor.
"That's where you get to in comedy and it's so magically intangible and then you'll come out and go, 'I have no idea why that is funny', but in that moment it was."
Howard, 43, has been a comedic star in the UK since the mid-2000s after finding fame through his BBC radio shows The Milk Run and The Russell Howard Show.
Then in 2009 he launched the highly successful BBC 3 television series Russell Howard's Good News, which increased his profile further in the UK.
In more recent years, the rest of the world has been catching up to Howard's humorous observations and cutting impersonations of the British working-class.
Howard's Netflix special Lubricant has been a worldwide hit and The Russell Howard Hour has spawn six seasons and more than 500 million views through interviews with famous personalities like Jim Carrey, Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, Elizabeth Banks, Greta Thunberg, Brian Cox and Ed Sheeran.
As a life-long comedy fan, he says we're living in a golden age of stand-up thanks to the explosion of streaming.
"When I was young you had to get tapes and then CDs," he says. "Videos would be passed around at school, whereas now a kid can just go on YouTube.
"It's brilliant. It allows you to travel and do comedy.
"The other advantage is audiences are more comedy savvy than they've ever been."
However, in many respects, a good joke hasn't changed. Much of Howard's best material relates to his innate knowledge of the various accents and idiosyncrasies that make up modern Britain.
I've got 40 cousins so Christmas was like being inside a Pogues song. It was just bananas.
- Russell Howard
He's like a one-man version of Matt Lucas and David Walliams' iconic comedy series Little Britain.
For that, Howard credits his extensive family when he was growing up in Bristol.
"I've got 40 cousins, so Christmas was like being inside a Pogues song," he says. "It was just bananas.
"It was just weird uncles and mad aunties and feral cousins.
"Everything was going off. So I was raised in this cartoon really.
"As a kid I'd pretended to be my uncle John, who briefly ran a karate club in his garage even though he can't do karate.
"We all took the piss out of each other really, which is another Aussie thing. You all take the piss, which is also a very British thing.
"That's how I grew up, then I started doing stand up, trying to apply that to the news and social stories and blending it all together."
Asked if the best comedy needs to be rooted in an element of truth, Howard says it's case of following your own nose as a stand-up comedian.
"It's got to be stuff you find funny," he says. "If it's something when you first heard it or observed it, and it got you in the guts, then that's what you should be doing.
"It just happens for me that it's always based in a truth, there's always some comedic embellishment, but there's always a big kernel of truth in it."
Howard has performed in Australia previously, but next month's tour will be his first trip to Newcastle.
After Weekender informs him that Newcastle's weather should be a more conducive to beach-going than north-east England's namesake, Newcastle upon Tyne, he replies: "I'm sure it's the same clothes ratio, because Geordies don't mind walking around with their tops off.
"It's an incredible place. Irrespective of the weather. Hardy people."