“If you see me in the street in a week’s time,” says Ross Noble, “I won’t remember anything I talked about tonight.” We might struggle, too. That’s not denying that Noble’s gigs are fine entertainment: his solo extemporising shtick is near unique, and it can be dreamily funny to witness all these streams of nonsense and lurid images plucked from thin air. But it’s remarkable how his subconscious generates nothing of any significance.
That hardly matters. No one’s here for profundity, and perhaps only those of us who’ve seen Noble do this countless times wish that – just once – he’d vary the formula. And, if I’m sometimes sat there thinking how vaporous it all is, I’m more often tickled by the procession of horny owls and mermaid jihadis that populate Noble’s fertile imaginative landscape.
Part of the trick is to browbeat us into submission. You’re laughing not just at what Noble says, but at the cheery doggedness with which he’ll dig away at some inauspicious seam until – as if we ever doubted it – it yields its comedy bounty. Tonight, an interjection by his deep-voiced production manager prompts a skit about a hungry blue whale, which then dovetails with a droll earlier gag about how to say “John Craven” in BSL. The liveliness and opportunism of his imagination really is a thing of wonder.
But, a teasing joke on the prophet Muhammad aside, nothing is allowed to surface that impinges too meaningfully on reality. The scripted material (assuming I’ve correctly identified it) is equally lightweight, but includes the evening’s funniest riff, featuring a rich image of TV presenter Neil Oliver, using his feet to read his script, written on the ground in braille. When Noble’s bubbles of creative fancy pop, they leave little behind – but it’s a pleasure to watch them inflate and bob around.
• At Anvil, Basingstoke on 5 February. Box office: 01256 844244. Then touring until 17 February.
