Live

Ross Noble - Things Tour, Cardiff

Alex Skinner 14/05/2009

People are idiots. It is a hard, jagged, bitter pill to swallow. This pill rears its ugly head at pretty much every comedy gig. Whether these people are compelled to shout some random crap out for comedy value or it's simply a medical problem of some sort I cannot tell. Either way there is no excuse for rebellious fools shouting or adding to what comedian X is discussing. Chipping in constantly with unfunny phrases, they do not think before the words belch out from them. Drunk/leery birthday girls whose self obsessive shouts are comprehendible only to manatees should be limited in an audience.

Ross Noble himself explains it best whilst miming: 'So, you want to drive the comedy bussssssss aaaaargh, argh, ARGHHHHH. (CRAAASHH)'.

This night in Cardiff started off mentioning the bells of the church down the road. This lead to much improvisation of hunchback-based japes to get the ball rolling. Conjoin that to your standard Welsh stereotyping including the language thing and you get laughs with crowd participation (in the form of shouting stuff out). Noble excels when he becomes the characters of his imagination, gaining recognition for the miming, yet overall acting out his fantasy characters. It is a joy to watch a Welsh hunchback with rickets walking across the stage to ring imaginary church bells or to start playing on a Moog keyboard.

With no warm up comedy act Noble solely dominated the stage, unleashing a wave of darker humour with a few Jade Goody jokes the audience lapped up from his expert delivery. He also tackled some stroke jokes regarding the FAST advertising campaign, people were relishing these naughty openers which were in unison with the opening improvisations.

Observations are also plentiful. 'To announce the Queen's Coronation - let's make a sandwich filling with chicken'. My favourite observation was pointing out that Swine flu/ fever was totally forgotten as soon as the Expenses scandal hit Britain, gaining the full focus of the nation in a blink of an eye. Then he dances the swine fever dance.

There is the issue of his sleep talking whereby he also has mind bogglingly surreal dreams, until his wife hits him with a shoe. A grown man acting out being chased by a monster with pumpkin legs is quite the enjoyable spectacle. This works nicely when acting out Beyonce on a treadmill with Jay Z, and then Ross Noble acts out smuggling pigs into Beyonce's house to let them loose. Or ponderings of acting out if profiteroles were in your peripheral vision (proffiteral vision). I will never be able to explain that story in a clearer way than that. This is the beauty of the act of endless digressions that are stacked upon further digressions.

The legion of loyal Noble-ites will always be with Ross. Intervals will not only relieve bladders, but allow the crowd to leave rubbish littering the stage upon his return. Many pairs of shoes this time and notes a-plenty requesting kisses. Or, the usual mementoes of crap muddled with crowd shouts leading me to believe Ross must be annoyed by this by now spanning over his several years touring as it does. Anyone in their right mind would be.

A comedian's comedian.

Ross Noble is still on his Nationwide tour.
Find more details at:

Ross Noble official website