Ross Noble does not have a catchphrase but if he did it is obvious what it would be. A number of times during last night's Jibber Jabber Jamboree show he said about a subject "I'll get back to that". Sometimes he actually did, but even when he didn't the audience was laughing too hard to care.
The Geordie stand-up can digress for England. His tangents have tangents. His asides have asides. One minute he was impersonating David Attenborough narrating a documentary about railway station toilets, the next he was imagining Jay-Z rapping about York Minster.
While there were a few scripted routines lurking within his high energy set, Noble was at his best when he was freewheeling and bouncing off his audience. He quickly struck comedy gold when he spotted a pair of fans in zebra-patterned tops. This triggered – using that word in a positive way – an elaborate riff about The Lion King and a surreal reverie about their private life.
As Noble is the first to admit, he is not the most linear of comedians. Yet somehow he managed to weave many of his disparate thoughts together as he skittered around a stage set of giant monkey heads and thick, entwined plant stems, the latter perhaps a physical manifestation of the workings of his brain.
At one point he compared his show to a ‘choose your own adventure’ book, which is as good a description as any. His flights of fancy constantly took proceedings in unexpected directions. Was it cheating if ventriloquists had botox? Did Alicia Keys' husband invent the Allen Key?
He made inspired leaps and links. ABBA became a recurring motif with him wondering if there were Portaloos at the battle of Waterloo and then later on, for reasons we should not spoil, he pictured Barack Obama miming to their hits.
What you do not get with Noble is much personal revelation. In fact it was slightly jarring when he told an anecdote about having to cut his hair because he kept getting mistaken for GB News presenter Neil Oliver. Somehow something as baldly factual as this, even though delivered with comic aplomb, felt less real than his off-the-wall noodling.
At the end, Noble introduced DJ Chris Moyles and his sidekick Dominic Byrne for a Ross'll Fix It moment where the presenters got the chance to perform at the Palladium. Their brief act was an attempt at plate spinning, which was apt. Spinning ideas as if they are plates is what Ross Noble does brilliantly.
