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!
Continue reading “Ross Noble – Stand-Up DVD Reviews – Part 1”
Well Eye Never 