CityLife

Ross Noble @ Opera House

18/11/05

SPOTTED at the White Stripes' Apollo show the night before, lanky Geordie comic Ross Noble arrived having done what every good comic should do before taking to the stage and soaked up the town he was performing in beforehand.

To do this one or two methods can be deployed - either by purchasing a local newspaper and scouring its contents for inspiration in your hotel room as Jo Brand recently admitted doing or by getting out and about like an old fashioned plod to hunt out the action.

Cramlington's Noble plumped for the latter and on Friday night it made for both magically surreal and down right hilarious consequences.

Bursting on stage through what appeared to a be an inflated mock-up of a burst zit, over the next 120 minutes he endeavoured to give the manic Lee Evans, who was also in town, a run for his money.

Inklings

Similar to Scotland's 'Big Yin' Billy Connelly in style, in that he also drops in early comic inklings, before returning to them sporadically throughout the show - the first target in Noble's sights proved to be the Christmas markets, which have just set up home around the city.

Not that he was impressed you understand, merely bemused at why dozens of shed selling 's**t crafts' that appeared to be dipped in chocolate, were here in the first place.

The more brash approach of one of the city's inhabitants did get Noble's approval though, as he went on to praise the reaction of an elderly Mancunian to a festively dressed bride-to-be on Deansgate.~

His apparent riposte (within earshot of the wedding party) in response to his wife's cooing had been - 'she looks like f**king Santa!'

Surroundings

Bono's omnipresent sunglasses, our confusing 24-hour news service and satellite towns also strayed intermittently on to his radar, but it is his surreal take on the world, which he puts down to the dullness of his surroundings growing up, which tends to hit home hardest though and so it proved here.

Coinciding with the BBC's annual Children In Need telethon, he first thanked us for our patronage before ruminating on the real reason for mascot Pudsey's eye patch - he was apparently saved from homelessness and crack addiction by Terry Wogan and it would be far more entertaining for the public if a real bear was used who could set about the show's guests.

Thoroughly original, immensely likeable and surprisingly generation-spanning - Noble's trajectory is surely set to hit new heights over the next 12 months.

What did you think? Have your say