Noble Pursuits (2)

I'm now faced with the daunting task of trying to convey how good Ross Noble's show was. It's not easy.

What might serve to sum it up is that me and Dave/Reg/Juan/whatever I called my mate in the previous post sat with a beer during the interval, talking about how good it had been so far.

"Trouble is", Tim said (swiftly changing his name again in the process), "I can't recall a damn thing that he's said."

It wasn't just me then. The fact that it was difficult to remember anything other than tiny snippets wasn't because it was unmemorable or not funny: Ross Noble is an incredible improviser, taking so many random cues from quick-fire interaction with the audience and then going off on incredibly surreal tangents. Sure, he'll have a repertoire to fall back on if needs be, but the first hour was a marvel of sheer off-the-cuff inventiveness. Crucially, it was downright-bleeding-hilarious: but so stream-of-consciousness and (somehow) simultaneously multi-layered, that I reckon it's going to take days for it to unravel in my mind.

There were few, if any, jokes to speak of: just an amazing cross referencing of equally daft ideas and scenarios: he would entangle the audience within them, and then convolute matters even further. What results is something just plausible enough to understand and follow, but the sheer oddness of it is where the humour develops and gathers momentum. I'll stop coming out with stuff like this now because I'm falling into the terrible trap of trying to analyse humour. I've also managed to describe something without really saying anything...so I'll stop now.

He must have been on stage for more than two and a half hours, taking the brief interval into account, and I was frequently crying with laughter. Those last few words are probably the best way of conveying how enjoyable it was.