WHEN it comes to getting into character, Ross Noble belongs to the Method school of acting.

So channelling his pigeon-keeping Nazi sympathising alter ego, he practised his blunt German drawl barking orders at his children Führer style, as you do.

“Once you get the lederhosen on and the heavy metal helmet, you just become the character,” he chuckles.

“It’s stupidly fun. My character is just insane. It’s perfect. He comes out with these mad bursts of insanity.”

As laid-back and frighteningly nonchalant in real life as one can glimpse from his comedy persona, he quite literally waltzed into The Producers audition, having been highly recommended for the role of Franz Liebkind by co-star Jason Manford.

“I got an email saying ‘We’re casting The Producers, is it something you’d be interested in?’,” says the Geordie comedian, cool as a cucumber.

“I’m a massive fan of the show, I’ve seen it twice in the West End and I’m a big fan of Mel Brooks. If you’re going to do musical theatre that’s the show you need to do so I went along to the audition.”

Someone tickled the keys of the piano and all eyes were on him. It could have gone either way, he admits.

“It’s on of those things where they ask you if you can sing and dance and I said ‘We shall find out, won’t we?’ “I walked in thinking I can sing, but being able to sing as part of a proper West End show is a different matter. They could have turned round and said, ‘What were you thinking?’ Luckily it went great.”

Based on Mel Brooks’s Academy Award winning movie, The Producers follows Max Bialystock (Cory English), a New York producer left impoverished by a string of flops. He recruits downtrodden accountant Leo Bloom (Jason Manford) to help him pull off Broadway's greatest scam. Together they aim to produce the worst show in history and run away to Rio with millions.

They bring on board Noble’s character Franz Liebkind, a short-fused former Nazi, to create the most appalling musical of all time.

Noble’s stand-up ‘training’ not to mention his trademark hopping and general state of unrest on stage proved an asset on his ascent to the theatre – eventually.

“I was in youth theatre as a kid - but there were no Nazis,” he quips. “It’s easy to forget that in a show like The Producers every single person in it is at the top of their game.

"I went in for the first day of rehearsal and I thought ‘This isn’t a gig you can just cruise through.’

“Luckily musical theatre is just like stand-up. It’s very much about doing different voices, slipping in and out of different characters and I’m always moving around on stage.”

Surprisingly, his favourite part of the production involves observing Springtime for Hitler – the sham musical set up for prodigious failure - from the wings.

And, of course, one glimpse at the surreal throng of motley characters rubbing shoulders backstage never fails to keep him entertained.

“I remember being sat on the couch from the office off the set and on one side of me I had a show girl, and on the other an old lady and someone else dressed a Nazi. It’s surreal. You’ve got everything backstage, Cherokee Indians, Nazis, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. It’s pretty odd.”

Musical theatre aside, nothing has yet matched the challenges and demands he faced taking the helm at the Adver as guest editor back in 2013 for his Dave show, Ross Noble Freewheeling.

Mustering unprecedented level-headedness, the news hound investigated a UFO landing before setting out to eradicate dog fouling in the town.

“I was great fun,” he recalls, barely stifling a giggle. “I came and did the Wyvern and that was our first week filming the show.

"It got to Thursday and we wondered, ‘Do we have an actual show, is that enough?’

"Then we came to the Adver on Friday morning and we thought ‘Yes, now we have a show.’

"The best part was dragging the photographer through the centre to take all these pictures and seeing it all printed. It was all pretty odd.”

The Producers will run at the New Theatre Oxford from June 29 to July 4.

Tickets are available from the New Theatre box office, on 0844 871 3020 or at www.atgtickets.com/oxford