Rating: 3/5

WHEN he was a kid, Geordie comedian Ross Noble wanted to be two things – a circus performer and a stuntman. His first starring role on the big screen in the horror-comedy Stitches has enabled him to realise both ambitions, as he revealed in a satellite Q&A session after a special screening at 140 cinemas around the country, including Teesside Showcase.

“One of my teachers said you have to have a GCSE in PE,” he says laughing. “I used to set fire to boxes and jump off the garage roof thinking a big Hollywood producer was going to walk past and say, ‘that kid’s got it, I’m going to put him in the movies’.

“I was obsessed. I used to read lots of books about special effects and that. When I read the script for Stitches, it was like 75 per cent of my bucket list. It was just ticking boxes. Tick, tick, tick.”

Stitches is a miserable children’s clown who, after a rowdy party in which the kids torment him, ends up dead with a carving knife in his face. Years later he returns for revenge on the now-teenage kids at another birthday party.

Noble, who spends all the film in clown’s wig and costume, is all the better for not playing for obvious laughs or just playing himself.

The deaths are outrageously gory and bloody – guts are ripped from stomachs, heads explode and an ice cream scoop used to harvest brains from a head “opened” with a tin opener.

Ross has taken a few acting roles on TV but this is his “first proper film” and he didn’t want to take the obvious acting route as the killer clown.

“Because there’s a lot of creeping around I wanted it to be a character rather than just me with a clown costume on,” he says. “So, at the risk of sounding an absolute t**t I approached the characterisation by making it as small as possible.”

His inspiration were northern workingmen’s club comics. “Because he’s really miserable at the start, I didn’t want to suddenly switch and become this crazed maniac,” says Noble.

“I wanted to keep him downbeat throughout.

You know those guys who had this dickie bow tie and were always saying, ‘my fat wife, my motherin- law, my wife’s so fat...’ They’re so full of this hatred and bile. “Then all of a sudden they were doing game shows and giving away cars and speedboats. I’m not buying that – bingo callery types trying to be showbizzy.”

Nobel is a big horror fan but hesitates to name the film he likes best. “Favourite? Blimey, that’s like saying what’s your favourite child? I wouldn’t say I had one in particular but when I was a kid I was a huge fan of the Maniac Cop films.”

Steve Pratt