Ross Noble has been one of my favourite comedians for many years, and I had a great time seeing him in March at the London Palladium, during his 21st tour called Jibber Jabber Jamboree. This was the first time I had seen him do stand-up in person, as the only other time I saw him live in the past was when he starred in Young Frankenstein back in 2017. But I knew what to expect, as I own all of his DVDs and have also enjoyed some of his online releases and TV appearances. And it was well worth the wait, he was brilliant.
What I love about Ross is that every single show he does is completely improvised, taking inspiration from people he sees or talks to in the audience to go off on surreal flights of fancy, along with occasional anecdotes about amusing things he’s seen and done. He’s never mocking or disparaging towards anyone he talks to, because he wants everyone to enjoy themselves, and he doesn’t have plants in the audience either. Every crowd is simply a new treasure trove of possibilities for him.
So every performance is completely unique and delightfully random, covering a myriad of different topics, as his imagination runs wild and goes in all sorts of weird, wonderful and unexpected directions. He has an extraordinary ability to go off on tangents, and sub-tangents, and countless layers of additional tangents, and then still circle back round to items he was talking about earlier, sometimes even linking things together, and keep it entertaining.
So he’s never short of things to talk about, his energy and creativity is amazing, and he’s consistently hilarious. Hence I own all of the DVDs that he released between 2004 and 2013. He really made the most of the format by including footage from multiple shows, audio commentaries, documentaries, quizzes, spoof copyright notices, animated menus, packaging with nice artwork, booklets that fold out into posters, and more.
In this post, therefore, I’m going to review the first 5 of his DVDs, as they contain a huge amount of material. I’ll then go through the rest of his DVDs in another post next month, and some other online material at some point after that, making this a trilogy altogether. I just thought I’d get this first part up in time for the long Bank Holiday weekend.
None of this is sponsored, I’m just happily bingeing on his stuff because I’m a big fan and I saw him live recently. You can see various clips on his current and older Youtube channels, there are audio versions of a few of his shows on Youtube and Audible, and I’ll compiled a huge playlist of clips as well. So I hope you enjoy this first set of reviews!
Contents
Unrealtime
DVD / Audible / Youtube Audio
This set contains 2 shows, along with lots of extra features. If you watch everything, including the commentaries on both gigs, then it will keep you busy for over 6 hours easily. These shows actually came after the Sonic Waffle tour, but were released first for some reason.
Disc 1 – Unrealtime
The first disc opens with a spoof copyright notice, which is unskippable but fun to read, because it cleverly combines the genuine legal information with Ross’s more surreal additions, thereby ensuring you do actually look through it. So you’re free to open a shady nightclub in the wood for voles, for example, or to show the DVD on an oil rig if you’ve converted it into your house and moved it to an estate, but woe betide you if you try to recreate the show using puppets or balance the disc on a donkey’s face, and don’t even bother looking for information on the side of a dog or a pig.
You’re then taken to the main menu, which shows the cover image from the DVD with a bit of animation, and plays a cool rock instrumental composed by Banks & Wag (who went on to compose the themes for his Australian Trip, Randomist & Nobleism).
The Unrealtime show lasts for an hour and a half, and was filmed at the Garrick Theatre in London in September 2003 (where I later saw him in Young Frankenstein in 2017). It’s a nice detail that the flowers at the back of the stage come into bloom when he walks on. They have no other use during the show, they just ensure that the stage doesn’t look too plain, like the sets on all of his tours.
The many subjects brought up by Ross include voles, monkeys, pigs, Narnia, clown shoes, speaking French, deep vein thrombosis, hairdresser training, TV drama 24, making ice cream, the UK Maths Squad, BBC One idents like the wheelchair basketball players, charity people in the street, the ‘sexing up’ of the Iraq weapons dossier, the Angel Of The North, and Tuxedo Royale (a nightclub in a boat with a revolving dance floor).
He also tells some very funny true stories, with one about witnessing a group of Hare Krishnas vs a drunk man in Oxford Street, another about embarrassing himself when meeting actor Sir Ian McKellen, and he does an impromptu song and dance routine to make light of a rather rough gig he had in Canvey Island. He then finishes by imagining Stephen Hawking delivering a lecture with a monkey as his assistant.
Disc 1 – Extras
The extra features on the first disc consist of:
- Commentary – Ross’ commentaries are a bit like his live shows, in that they’re entertaining and full of random tangents. He generally refers to what’s happening on stage, with nice insights and additional comedy material, but he regularly gets distracted by other amusing thoughts too. In this case the most notable moments are when he talks about the flowers on the set and the different types of people in the audience who get involved with his shows.
- Trivia Track – This subtitle track displays lots of nonsense ‘facts’ relating to things that Ross mentions during the show, for a bit of extra silliness. There are a few running gags along the way, including claims that 90% of various things are made in Hull, and it also claims that the Wind In The Willows was the first book to be published in Braille. This type of extra was unique to this set, he didn’t repeat it on later releases.
- Trivia Quiz – 20 questions about the information in the Trivia Track. Get them all right and it unlocks hidden footage, as listed below. It doesn’t tell you your score as you go along, it only gives you the total at the end, so it’s quite tricky. You need to have a good memory, and you certainly can’t blindly guess all the answers if you haven’t looked at the Trivia Track, as they’re all plausible in Ross’s universe. But if you have the DVD and want the answers, the sequence is BCBC ABCA CAAC BABA BCAC.
The bonus hidden extras are a worthy reward for doing the quiz, but if you want to cheat then they’re titles 3, 4 & 5 on the disc respectively, if your player allows you to select them manually.
- Opening Movie – This was played to the audience at the start of each live show. It begins with a 2-minute animation of Sparky The Information Slug, who gives out the usual reminders about what you can’t do during the performance, before getting into an angry rant. That’s followed by a dramatic 2-minute black and white movie involving a bar, a cow, some magic beans and a terrible accident, and then the remaining 45 seconds is the introduction that brings Ross out on stage.
- Rowdy Slugs – A 10-minute clip recorded at Komedia Brighton in February 2002, where Ross gets into a whole routine about slugs, whether it’s throwing them, having eyes like theirs, slugs on ice, drunk slugs, or a slug and worm production of Romeo & Juliet.
- Fat Ross – A 5-minute clip recorded at Café de Paris, London, at the Orangutan Foundation Benefit Show in November 2001, where an overweight Ross imagines going on Pop Idol with an owl.
Disc 2 – Regent’s Park
The second disc starts with a regular copyright notice, followed by a message from Ross accusing you of not reading it, and imagining the bizarre things it could have been warning you about that you missed. The menus then use the same music as on Disc 1, but the animated footage shows Ross moving around on stage at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. It’s a lovely venue where I saw Sara Pascoe last year and a production of Peter Pan in 2018.
This second stand-up performance was filmed there in July 2003, a few months before the show on the first disc, but it doesn’t matter which order you view them in as they’re not connected. And it lasts just over 65 minutes, so it’s not as long as the first show, but it’s still packed full of stuff.
On this occasion, tramps become a regular theme, and there are a few latecomers who will have been rather mystified as to what he was going on about to start with. It always pays to be punctual at a Ross Noble gig or it will make even less sense than usual! Among other things, he also talks about the trees and camera at the back of the set, lap dancers, sirens, being easily distracted, pensioners in the Post Office, weird sex talk, Tom Jones, a cheesy gift from the audience, posh people, deaf people, an incident involving him on an old pizza bike and a guy with chips and a kebab, funny graffiti, Gremlins, the Bible, herds of Jesuses, and Jesus with an inflatable face. Then in the credits he lists himself as Location Catering, three Camera Operators and a Sound Engineer, as well as one of the Executive Producers and Directors.
Disc 2 – Extras
There are some extra features on the second disc as well, none of which are hidden this time.
- Commentary – This is another entertaining, casual affair, where Ross talks about the venue and the set, getting sweaty, the state of his hair, Bill Oddie, lovemaking, another experience of an outdoor gig, gadgets, motorcycles, and being sceptical about religion. There’s also an amusing moment where his phone goes off thanks to fellow comedian Danny Wallace calling him, and instead of cutting it out Ross puts Danny on loudspeaker to say hello to the viewers.
- Ross On Tour – A 17-minute behind the scenes feature, where Ross has fun during his sound checks and in his dressing room, and introduces us to the crew. There are also clips of him on stage chatting to a housewife in the audience and talking about using hotel toiletries. Then at the end we see him taking a long walk to try and find his room in the hotel.
- Sonic Waffle Preview – A 7-minute clip from his next DVD.
- Picture Gallery – A slideshow containing 51 photos of Ross on stage or in promotional shots.
- Biography – 6 pages of text with general information about Ross from 2004, including lists of his TV appearances, radio series, live shows and comedy awards to date. He had already achieved a huge amount in his career at that stage, with much more still to come.
Sonic Waffle
DVD / Audible / Youtube Audio
The Sonic Waffle tour took place before his Unrealtime tour, so it’s not clear why he released the DVDs in the opposite order. But it doesn’t matter, as you can watch his shows in any order.
This release is just a single disc, and it doesn’t come with a poster unlike most of his DVDs, but it’s crammed full of material to enjoy nonetheless, which actually takes longer to go through than the Unrealtime set. If you watch everything and listen to all the commentaries, it’ll take you about 7 hours!
Theme Song & Opening Film
Once again the DVD opens with an amusing variation on the copyright message, where Ross tells you how to make your home even more private, outlines a very specific example of where not to project the video in Spain, advises you not to put the disc in an otter’s eyes, gives a very long (and non-existent) website address to find out the exact dimensions of the tallest man in history, and states who to call if you have a pirate copy of the DVD.
You’re then taken to the main menu, which has an animated version of the cover image of Ross on a flying pig. It’s accompanied by an original 4-minute rock song called There Goes Noble, written by Ross with Damien Coldwell. It’s incredibly daft but very enjoyable, about lots of random things that Ross would tell people about if he could, and it also plays in full over the credits of the show.
A music video for the song can be found among the extra features too, which shows him travelling, meeting fans, performing on stage in his Unrealtime and Sonic Waffle shows, doing the Sonic Waffle cover shoot, and flying a helicopter. There are also optional karaoke-style subtitles that highlight the words, and the lyrics are in the DVD booklet as well, including the line “a blind bookie’s guide dog trying to pick a winner.”
As the song plays, the menu options flip around the screen at regular intervals, so the text is turned in different directions. The Chapters menu is also animated, with Ross commenting briefly on each of the chapter names while clips of him on stage are displayed on the right of the screen. The Extras menu has a bit of subtle background animation too, but no music or comments.
The show then begins with a fun little film about his origin story, showing how he became known as Radioactive Kung Fu Fridge Boy & Monkey Slayer, with music by Damien Coldwell again and narration by Peter Serafinowicz. The transcript of the narration is included in the DVD booklet, along with credits for the film.
The Show
The show itself was filmed at the Vaudeville Theatre in London (now famous for hosting Six The Musical) in September 2002, on the last night of his run. And it’s completely unedited, as explained by Ross in the commentary, so it lasts for 1 hour 50 minutes (including the 3-minute opening film). The only thing they’ve cut out is the interval, obviously, there’s just a brief pause there after he’s brought the first half to a close. It’s unusual for a stand-up DVD to be presented in this way, because most comedians tend to cut out any references to the interval to make it feel like a continuous show. But Ross keeps it in here and on some of his other DVDs as well.
The set on stage is quite a simple affair at first glance, with an image of Ross on a screen on the back wall, and a few boxes scattered about. But, as again pointed out in the commentary, it subtly changes during the show, with the image of Ross on the back screen blinking occasionally and changing from black and white to colour, while the walls and boxes also light up in different colours during the performance.
As usual, once Ross emerges on to the stage, he soon launches into another wonderful array of random material on various topics, including a posh nanny in the audience with a special talent, mountaineering, jumping and kicking his heels together like a Cockney, Elton John fighting midgets, licking the Dalai Lama and the stage, BT marketing calls, Star Wars, weak German dancers, having a bad ear infection, nuts out of context, the musical Chicago, the Stomp percussion group, finding faces in muffins, the Oscars, inventing dances, a sequel to Billy Elliot, losing weight, tending sheep, hand puppets, angels, wind-assisted ballet, bad contemporary dance, and how he almost got stabbed in an alley.
Extras
There are various extras on the DVD to enjoy as well, some of which are rather unusual:
- Commentary – Once again this is an entertaining mixture of Ross’ thoughts about aspects of the show along with other diversions. Apart from expanding on some of the topics listed above, he also talks about the making of the opening film, his rubberised trousers, coach trips, scrolls, film spin-offs of On The Buses, Dick Van Dyke, celebrities in his audiences, distracting his dog, bargains at supermarkets, the shelf on the stage, millers, why it isn’t wise to have fizzy pop in a commentary, editing the rude bits out of porn films, Angel Delight and fat joggers. He then finishes by talking about some of the people in the credits and gives a final insight into the opening film.
- Commentary On The Commentary – Here Ross attempts to listen back and respond to things from the first commentary he’d recorded about a month earlier. So he does add extra context and humour to some of the topics, and also goes off on a few new tangents as well, including what it might be like to have a duck’s face, or to have a scratch and sniff Dalai Lama figure, and he reveals his love of Scalextric sets. But ultimately it’s very funny to hear him gradually losing his mind, as he heckles his past self for being silent or for saying silly things, or responds to his movements on stage (as he can’t hear the original show audio) by narrating them like a workout video, or impersonating himself to imagine what he might have been talking about. And his past self is making him break down in laughter by the end.
- Live At The Apollo – His only appearance on Live At The Apollo, broadcast on 27 September 2004 during the first series, lasting for half an hour. It includes the classic routine about gluing meat to the face that stuck in many people’s minds, alongside other ramblings about sponge hands, the shiny floor, a man who counts gold, Jesus curing lepers, not being easy to live with, marrying an Australian woman, pleasuring a turtle, winding up his wife in the supermarket and orbiting old ladies.
- Live At The Apollo Commentary – This is another unusual style of commentary, where Ross is joined by Cantonese interpreter Deborah. She translates his comments as well as a bit of his material from the show, and the two of them sometimes chat in English about the translations. Topics discussed along the way include him sweating on stage, meat on the face, complaints about his Jesus routine, ping pong, a giant space monkey controlling the universe, using magic clouds to avoid the congestion charge, and Mogwai.
- There Goes Noble – The music video for the song, with optional sing-along lyrics, as discussed above.
- The Muffin Game – Based on the routine he did during the show, this is your chance to guess the faces of celebrities in the tops of 13 muffins, with Ross making little comments as you go along. There are no multiple-choice options and there are no prizes for right answers, because they’re impossible to guess really. Instead, you just press a button to reveal each face. It doesn’t actually tell you who they are though, which isn’t helpful if you don’t recognise them.
Randomist
DVD / Audible / Youtube Audio
This is Ross Noble’s most comprehensive box set, with 4 discs chock full of material. It contains 3 stand-up shows (all uncut with commentaries available), 2 tour documentaries, a bonus stand-up show accessible by completing a quiz, and a disc full of even more random footage from his live shows. So if you want to work your way through absolutely everything, you’ll need to set aside roughly 16½ hours!
The first disc opens with a long scrolling list of things you can do to kill time while the copyright notice plays – before said notice flashes up for just a brief second. This isn’t repeated on the other discs, where you just get a standard copyright notice for a few moments instead. The menus on discs 1-3 are also similar, showing images of Ross on stage in the middle of his orange inflatable set, with the options spinning and shaking below it, while some ghostly music plays. The 4th disc is unique, however, as noted below.
Newcastle Show (Disc 1)
This is the headline show in the box set. And to make it feel a bit like you’re in the theatre, the menu gives you the option to see the intro film first, that was played to the audience, which lasts just under 1½ minutes. It’s simply an animation, with voiceover by Ross, about the things you can and can’t do during the performance, with humorous additions such as the rare exceptional cases where photography is allowed.
Then the show itself, filmed at City Hall in Newcastle in December 2005, lasts for 1 hour 55 minutes. During that time Ross talks to several people in the audience, including a man who works at a local bar, an art student, a landscape gardener, a man who sneaks out to the loo, a pregnant woman, and a man who seems to hate people from the south.
Beyond that, his extensive miscellany of topics includes a human cannonball, hoodies, Rabbis, a horse at the local monument, playing up to news cameras, Bono, rapper 50 Cent, owls, glittery bath bombs, a special poo, breastfeeding, colourful clothing, his inflatable set, kicking back (which causes his mic’s battery pack to fall out), face transplants, the absurdities of recent news stories about Muslims and ID cards, voice-activated Directory Enquiries, and offending people in a Live 8 radio interview (he keeps promising it throughout the show but it’s worth the wait). And in the interval there’s a spoof advert for Ted Danson’s Pizza Shack.
In addition, the half hour encore is provided as a separate feature. It starts off as a fun Q&A session, during which there are references to the meat on the face routine, unicycling, the game shows Catchphrase and You Say We Pay, fortune cookies, a Christmas present from his dad, Craig David, eBay and religion.
But then in the latter half it descends into hilarious chaos as people in the audience start to panic because, unbeknown to Ross beforehand, the car park is due to close at 11pm, meaning that some decide to leave before the show ends. He does eventually finish though, with a crucial tip for making love, before some amusing follow-up notes are shown instead of credits, and there’s a nice post-credits cameo from Jimmy Carr in response to an earlier mention of him. So I’m glad he’s included the full encore, it’s just as funny as the main feature.
Melbourne Show (Disc 2)
The next show in the set was recorded at Melbourne Town Hall in 2006, lasting 1 hour 25 minutes. The technical quality isn’t quite as good here, as it was filmed using cameras a short distance back in the auditorium and the audio was picked up from those, rather than directly from Ross’ mic, so it’s a bit too echoey because of the acoustics in the venue. It’s still watchable and funny though.
Ross is also having to perform with a fractured arm (the cause of which is discussed further in the documentary on Disc 3), but that doesn’t bother him, as he simply talks about it and gets some good material out of it. There’s also plenty of inspiration from the audience as usual, as he deals with several latecomers, embarrasses himself by mistaking a lady for a man, chats to some school friends and talks to a zoo worker.
He also talks about kicking back (in a slight repeat from the first show but taken in a completely different direction), bushfires (including a reworking of Kumbaya, a song he also adapted for a very different reason in the live show I saw in person recently), javelins, breastfeeding, the Commonwealth Games, face transplants, being censored on Spicks & Specks, the Queen, singer Shannon Noll, being attacked by a monkey at the zoo, being licked by a giraffe in a safari park, and a man’s disturbing interpretation of the inflatable set!
Stoke Show (Disc 3)
The third show in the set was filmed back in England, at Stoke’s Victoria Hall in 2005, and again lasts just under 1½ hours. It has better audio quality than the Melbourne show too, and the cameras are in slightly closer positions.
There’s quite a bit of audience interaction in this one, as he talks to a police officer, workers from Toby Carvery and Lush, a 12-year-old boy, a lady in an electric wheelchair who whizzes up the central aisle after the interval to try and kiss him, and someone who leaves early to catch a bus. There are also lots of items left on stage for him during the interval, which has become a running theme of his gigs over the years, so he looks through all of that bit by bit during the second half, in amongst his other ramblings.
Other topics that come up during the show include post-it notes, testicles, the one-way system, Adam Faith’s death, shampooing a dwarf and wicker baskets. There are also a couple of rare cases of him repeating material from other shows in the set, about Little Chef and glittery bath bombs, but with some differences. In fact, as he explains in the commentary, it’s the Newcastle show where he repeats and expands on the glitter story, as that took place after the Stoke show. And he finishes with a Q&A, where he talks about the Monkey Forest attraction and dancing to imaginary music on a petrol station forecourt, and tries on a pair of huge shoes given to him by an audience member.
Commentaries
On Discs 1-3, Ross provides audio commentaries for the Newcastle, Melbourne and Stoke shows (including the encore for the first one). And he recorded them all in one session, lasting about 5½ hours, so he has to figure out what he’s going to eat along the way to keep his energy up. To begin with he also talks as if you’re going to be joining him for the whole marathon, which some hardcore fans might I guess, but I didn’t, I spread them out over different days instead. But it’s worth listening to them all in any case, as they are fun, and during the final commentary it’s clear he’s gradually losing his marbles!
He naturally discusses many of the topics and jokes that come up in each show, and also explains some of the local references that some viewers might not understand. He also talks about the set, his stage outfit, his fractured arm, items that people have brought to his shows, his favourite line in this box set, and how strange it feels to be watching himself back.
All of those little insights are very interesting. But naturally they’re spread amongst other amusingly random subjects as well, including Carol Vorderman, a motorcycling magazine, Wikipedia rumours, orchestra pits, being a street entertainer and a festival mascot, arguing bears, an unusual ukulele, Captain Beaky, Carlisle, Evel Knievel, otters, people who take offence on behalf of others who aren’t offended, Camberwell, tiny shelves, children in his audiences, members of some armed forces who aren’t allowed beards (a policy that has only recently changed for the Army), and Spender (a Geordie cop show).
Quiz & Bonus Show (Disc 3)
The quiz is a test to see if you’ve watched all of the other shows and documentaries in the box set. There are 12 multiple-choice questions, which don’t change, and at the end it tells you how many you’ve got right, without revealing which ones they are. So if you haven’t paid close attention it will be quite hard, as given Ross’ style there’s no logical answer to most of them.
That said, several of the questions are quite easy really, even if you’ve only watched everything once, and there are only 3 choices for each question, so with a bit of patience you can figure it out. And when you get all 12 questions right, you’re then given a code, which you can enter to bypass the quiz in future and jump straight to the hidden footage.
Alternatively, if you’re lazy, you can use one of the spoilers below to cheat your way to the bonus show:
- The quiz answers are BAAC CBBB BACA.
- The winning code is 0720.
- The title number is 6 if your player lets you select it manually.
Whichever way you go about it, your reward is a half-hour edit of a show from the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham in 2005. That’s the same venue where I saw Derren Brown and The ELO Experience during a weekend visit in 2022. During the show he talks about strip clubs, a shy couple in the audience who met at a Tesco supermarket, TV chef Ainsley Harriott, snooker player Steve Davis, a mate with Tourette’s and a horse with narcolepsy. However, there are a few rowdy guys who insist on shouting out silly things as if they think they’re funny, which clearly gets on Ross’ nerves, as they do spoil things a bit. He deals with it very well though and the show’s still very amusing overall, so it is worth watching. But if those guys were calling out like that during the whole show, it’s just as well it’s been cut down!
Documentaries
As well as the stand-up shows, there are a couple of documentary features in the set as well, where we follow Ross on tour around various places. They incorporate lots of clips of him performing, as well as backstage banter and little explorations of the places he visits, so they’re a lot of fun and very interesting.
- Ross Noble’s Highland Fling (Disc 2) – This documentary about his 2005 tour of small theatres and halls in the Highlands of Scotland lasts for 1 hour 12 minutes, and in 2022 he made it available on Youtube for free. As well as all the great show footage, Ross also experiences a hotel evacuation, visits a farm, talks to a man with a badly injured hand, is surprised to see a lot of 2CV cars, has a freaky déjà vu experience in a school, sees the set inflated on stage for the first time, talks to a fan’s mother, and admires some tapestries, among other things.
- Australia Tour (Disc 3) – This is a half hour feature about his shows Down Under. To begin with the tour starts off fine, as he tells us about animals to watch out for on the roads, shows us huge models of a rocking horse and a lobster, and manages to confuse a couple of exchange students. And in his shows he talks to his audiences about travelling around, churches (with another reference to Kumbaya) and lobster genitals. But he’s then injured in a collision between his motorbike and another vehicle, hence the fractured arm in his Melbourne show above. So it’s interesting to learn about the effect that had on his performances, at first making him feel restricted before he learnt to make the most of its comedic potential.
The Randomiser (Disc 4)
The menu on the final disc shows a 3D animation of a huge and complex machine, with Ross’ face in a screen at the top, and a single option on a central panel inviting you to play the Randomiser.
This launches a title on the disc that is 2¼ hours long, containing loads of clips from shows filmed in Liverpool, Manchester and York. However, while it always starts with the first chapter, the rest are then played in an entirely random order, which changes each time you watch it. And it only keeps going for an hour or so before throwing you back to the menu, so you have to keep replaying it to try and see everything. You can skip clips you’ve already seen though.
Because it’s shuffling multiple clips from each show, it does get a bit jarring when things are clearly out of order, such as when Ross has been talking to a certain audience member or rambling on about a particular subject. But it does also compel you to keep playing the Randomiser to try and see the other bits you missed.
So while I would have much preferred a simple chronological compilation of highlights from each show, this is still a fun way of watching Ross in action, as he looks through gifts from the audience and performs shadow puppetry on the back screen, and talks about Big Brother, the Pope, Bon Jovi, cheese, a superlambanana sculpture, a German Christmas market, identity parades, law, a man with a broken foot, interpretive dance, pigs, being killed by a bear in a florist, a man with a walking stick, Chas & Dave and Children In Need, amongst many other things.
Fizzy Logic
This set has 2 discs with multiple shows and other extras, which will take around 8 hours to get through, including the audio commentary. There’s no spoof copyright notice this time, but the main menu sees Ross surrounded by lots of big bubbles, fending them off whenever they approach him.
Canberra Show (Disc 1)
The main show lasts for a whopping 2 hours and 8 minutes, and was filmed at the Canberra Theatre in Australia in March 2007. At the start he’s particularly interested by a mascot brought in by an audience member, wearing a t-shirt from a previous tour, so that sparks a lot of chat about what it is and how it was acquired at various points during the show. He also talks to another guy in the audience who’s reluctant to give his name and where he works at first, even though it’s nothing particularly sensitive when we do find out.
Apart than that, Ross also talks about his sweaty testicles from all of his motorcycling, flamenco dancers, Siamese twins, backpackers, Tom Cruise, a conversation with someone in Morocco, being strip-searched and questioned by customs officers at airports, blind people, a few interval gifts from the audience, religion, Bogans, emus and making a faux pas when learning about Steve Irwin’s death. He then finishes with a very funny mime routine about falling birds, incorporating several suggestions from the audience based on things he’s mentioned during the show.
Extras (Disc 1)
The first disc also contains these extra features:
- Intro Film – A very catchy and funny animated song, lasting just under 3 minutes, to lay out the usual pre-show announcements with a typical Noble twist.
- Encore – 8½ minutes of extra material, where Ross elicits applause for audience members who were mentioned during the show, then does a Q&A about pirates vs ninjas, monkeys, his bike and when he’ll return to Canberra.
- Commentary – As usual, the commentary on the main show and the encore is also very random and entertaining. Ross is happy to be in a much more spacious recording room this time, where he makes one of the sound engineers laugh on several occasions. He gives a few insights into the show, including some of the Australian references, but more often he loses track as a result of veering off on to other topics such as the Seven Dwarfs, Val Doonican, Canberra, monkeys, his next passport photo, inappropriate music for sexy occasions, ballroom dancers, infomercials and hot cross buns. His screen then goes off towards the end of the main show (although we still see it playing), and rather than pause the recording to fix it, he just ploughs on and jokes about it, and tries to figure out when the show is likely to have ended so he can stop. Inevitably he goes on too long, so the DVD presents a blank screen to accompany the extra 2 minutes of chatter. He is able to watch the encore though, during which he mentions Pat Sharp and the other motorbikes he owns.
- New Zealand – A nice half-hour documentary about touring Australia’s neighbour in 2007, including some clips of him during his shows. Along the way he talks about strange place names, the New World supermarket, a postponed motocross festival, over-the-top comedy mimes, a man with an impressive beard in the audience, a radio interview, strange jazz, and wearing a motorcycle helmet in an airport.
UK Shows (Disc 2)
The second disc contains extracts from 7 shows on his UK leg of the tour, recorded in September and October 2006. They’re roughly 25-30 minutes each, lasting 3 hours in total.
The 7th show is only accessible if you can prove that you know where the other 6 were filmed, by selecting the correct town or city from 6 pairs that are presented to you. But it’s easy to figure out, as the venues are stated in the credits for each show (and listed below) – or you can just cheat and go to title 7 on the DVD if your player lets you, as the other shows use titles 1-6.
So these are the shows on the disc, two of which are at the same venue, along with a flavour of the topics and people that Ross jokes about in each case:
- Theatre Royal, Glasgow – Linen vs leather jackets, riding a motorbike like a pirate, a railway engineer, the Wicker Man and motorway text message signs.
- City Hall, Newcastle – Hash cookies, wigs, a flow chart of remembrance, goths, pigeons, leaving his mobile phone in the fridge, messing with charity people in the street, joking in knife shops, and an inappropriate moment backstage at a charity gig.
- Opera House, Manchester – A man who calls out as soon as Ross comes on stage, Latvian whittling, urban cattle farmers, music students, the world’s smallest man, testicular communication and a gift of chocolate fudge cake.
- Victoria Hall, Stoke – A distinguished gentleman, a sudden bang in the theatre, capturing Geordies, Family Fortunes, Björk, and local attractions The Monkey Forest, Peak Cavern (The Devil’s Arse!) and the Gladstone Pottery Museum.
- Grand Opera House, York – A box of mutes, fancy outfits at horse races, porcupines, a criminal solicitor, York Minster, people dressed in historical costumes, biscuits and taking a paralysed man roller skating.
- Opera House, Manchester – A latecomers indie band, the chase music from Keystone Cops, Louis Walsh vs the Titanic, fighting Westlife, Supernanny, his Australian wife Fran, people who get sayings wrong, and what can happen to children with bums for faces at the zoo.
- Cliffs Pavilion, Southend – Chips, pelicans, Autumnwatch, teasing a lady’s boyfriend who’s late to the show, the seafront and the Fortune of War roundabout.
Australian Trip
This 2-disc set is a companion to the Fizzy Logic DVD, as it relates to the same tour but incorporates different performance footage, apart from a couple of clips from the Canberra show of course. Altogether it’ll take about 6¼ hours to go through everything in this set.
Documentary
The main feature is a 6-part series from 2007, which was shown on Channel 5 in the UK, about Ross travelling around Australia during his Fizzy Logic tour. The episodes last just under 45 minutes each, so they would have been an hour with adverts on TV, and episodes 1, 2 & 3 were made available for free on his Youtube channel in December 2022 and January 2023.
It’s a very enjoyable and interesting series where we get to admire beautiful landscapes, learn about unusual places and meet a variety of people, all interspersed with funny clips of Ross on stage. He’s not a professional tour guide, obviously, so sometimes he just makes things up for fun, but on other occasions he learns some cool bits of real history and trivia.
Some of the places and topics featured in the episodes include:
- Animals on the roads, a giant prawn model, Macadamia Castle, the 2BH radio station building shaped like a radio, the car from the Mad Max films, fruit flies, Orange World Mildura, and performing in a cinema.
- The Southern Hemisphere’s largest playable guitar, Wagga Wagga (where everything seems to be broken), riding a mobility scooter, having a nighttime go-kart ride, talking to a Christian preacher, visiting a Catholic shop, the world’s biggest Merino ram, a car showroom with a giant oyster on top, reading a bowel screening notice during a radio interview, a service station shaped like Ayers Rock, the phallic-looking Queens Wharf Tower in Newcastle (which was demolished a decade later), and the grass-covered roof of Canberra’s Parliament House.
- The Big Gold Panner statue, Mount Panorama racetrack that’s a public road when not in use for events, Sydney Hospital’s boar statue, sneaking into tourists’ photos, the Big Orange, the Blue Lake in Mount Gambier, architecture in Melbourne, the Sale Swing Bridge, statues in Bendigo, a laser light show to commemorate a shipwreck, a whale sculpture and Cheese World.
- A tour of Kryal Castle including the whipping of a wench and the exercise benefits of holding an eagle, painted cow statues and some phallic-shaped statues, the National Wool Museum, a Land Rover on a pole, seeing a shark exhibition in Port Pirie and being awarded the key to the city by the Mayor, a Barnacle Bill seafood shop in a church, and cuttlefish mating.
- Nullarbor Plain and the Eyre Highway that runs through it, kangaroos, Kalgoorlie’s Super Pit gold mine, a street full of brothels with one damaged by a car, Esperance winning Australian Port Of The Year, unusual cuisine at The Loose Goose, the Dolphin Discovery Centre, the clothing dummies at Stuart’s Mensland, constantly ringing church bells in Perth, Hank Marvin, and Hutt River Province that claimed to be its own sovereign state (it was later dissolved in 2020).
- A dodgy motel room, a huge satellite dish, shipping container homes in Karratha, feeding fish in Darwin, an underground hospital and Smurf statue in Mount Isa, heavy rain, a small train, the Mackay Show with agriculture and competition chickens, and the many statues of bulls in Rockhampton (the beef capital of Australia) that often have their testicles stolen.
Extras
The DVD set also includes a couple of extra features:
- A bonus episode with just over 45 minutes of additional footage. While out and about, Ross looks at a mural in Lismore, finds a couple of stuffed koalas with the big guitar, tells a story about Jimmy the Chimpanzee, imagines monkeys fighting crocodiles, learns that plastic bags are banned in Timboon, and discovers some chickens in an old helicopter near Daly Waters Pub. And in a variety of clips from his stand-up gigs, he talks about hamsters, budgies, Bowen cashing in on the filming of the Australia movie, an ageing venue that’s about to be demolished, cannons outside a church, a closed joke shop, an unusual place name from an audience member that he struggles to understand at first, Atherton Tablelands, new age shops with magical items, a closed paintball centre, and a shop called Wombat Woodwind & Brass.
- A 1-hour documentary about Ross and his friend Billy Ward taking part in Dawn To Dusk, famous for being Britain’s longest and toughest off-road motorcycle race. The 24-hour challenge is tough enough for professional riders, but Ross and Billy only have recreational off-road experience and have never done any races before, plus they’ve come into this event with no training and only a week of planning. But as there are only 3 professional teams, just making it to the finish line would see them ranked in fourth place. So the day takes a lot out of them, but they support each other throughout, they have a good laugh along the way, and it’s interesting to see how they get on. Their arrival at the site, their final preparations and the race itself have since been posted for free on Ross’ Youtube channel.
Conclusion
And that’s it for this first part of my Ross Noble rundown, which clearly shows just how packed each of his DVDs are. So I hope you enjoyed that, and I’ll take you through the rest of his DVDs next month. In the meantime, feel free check out my stand-up comedy reviews to find out about other comedians I like.
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