Noble Prize

Firstly, apologies for the dreadful title of this post. Comedy is not my strong point, as regular readers / long-suffering friends will know...

As I mentioned yesterday, we went to see Ross Noble last night. I first heard of him on "Just a Minute" on Radio 4 where he proceeded to ramble aimlessly, and win by a country mile. He struck me as a very funny, possibly unhinged, definitely Geordie man, so when the chance to pop along and see his latest show, "Noodlemeister" came up, I leapt at the chance.

I was a bit worried at first, as there were very few people in the audience, but luckily there seemed to be a mad rush five minutes before the start. One of the reasons I was worried was because it must be hard for a comic to play to a fairly empty audience. But the primary reason was because of my absolute mind-numbing fear of being singled out by a comic and made the butt of their jokes for the entire evening. Or being invited on stage in that resolute stalwart of the unfunny comic, audience participation.

But luckily, by the time Noble wobbled on stage, I was happily masked by a pretty large crowd. And as Noble is a funny man, he didn't rely on audience participation. I say he wobbled onto stage, but that's not the best description. I could say he glided, but that implies too much grace...stumbled, that's the word I'm looking for! And pretty much from the first moment he was off into his own fantasy world. He pinched an umbrella from an audience member and that was it - have prop will caper.

His act was utterly surreal yet grounded in mundanities - bodily waxing / doodling, and a memorable section about being abused by the Queen of the Seagulls in Liverpool - I really was crying with laughter at that point. The only slight waver was when he turned onto the subject of Guantanamo Bay. It's just a little too scary and horrific or be a subject for comedy. But other than that he reminded us that you need to keep a sense of humour about you in the world. The Guardian review mentioned above refers to the joke about his Dad, who suffers with Parkinsons Disease. His Dad found it extremely amusing, we should point out, but this idea of using humour to overcome problems sums up Noble.

And not only that, he's an excellent diplomat. At the end he took questions from the audience, and one referred to "the irritating tarts" who had done nothing but talk loudly throughout his encore (even their boyfriends turned to them and said "for the love of God shut up!) Now it looked like the audience were going to get nasty, but Noble diffused it, by turning the joke on us. Having said how he would have liked to stab said people in the head for talking, he then righteously lambasted us for applauding us while groaning at an earlier reference to a poo sculpture.

And full marks also for laying into the tosser from Essex who accused Newcastle of being "a shithole". Noble's response?

"Have you BEEN to Romford?"