The Verse’s Tamara Stidwell reviews comedian Ross Noble’s touring Uk show Brain Dump which came to Brighton Dome on the 8th December.
Ross Noble staggered on stage, his long iconic hair dishevelled, his baggy black suit hanging over his shoes like a naughty 40 year old school boy. Famously dry, ridiculous and just frankly bizarre. His jokes seem to pan out for decades and by the time he gets there he’s started another one. But that is why we love him. 25 years in the game has given him a natural desire to be every bit as peculiar as he wishes and we just went along with the workings of this magnificent madman.
Unscripted, completely improvised wittery is Ross Noble’s arena and from this night I learnt some valuable lessons in life:
- If your wife has a hairy back you can burn it off by wearing a glass trilby in the sun
- Refer to her sensuality as parts of a butchers cut
- squirrel feeders are a euthemism, for what? Nobody really knows
- if you see a Muslim, pull the rip chord. (I think this last one is perhaps best left in the uncensored slop of Ross’ brain.)
Before the show had begun a big inflatable beach ball had been bouncing around the audience and an overeager front seat member had launched himself into the orchestra pit to save the ball, unfortunately landing on his back. Noble had seen this and begun a skit of the man trying to claim compensation but then realising that there was no way he’d want to explain the situation of a beach ball dive into an orchestral pit to his lawyers. As the beach ball victim become the hero and stood up to take a clap he unwittingly just offered his b*lls on a plate to be referred to and ripped throughout the night. It was hilarious. Possibly the best night of his life.
Close to the border jokes didn’t seem to go down so smoothly with Brightonian’s conscientious cosmopolitans. Picking out one dude from the audience Ross Noble said “with his Bradford accent” he sounded like the most homo-phobic man alive who would stand disgraced at Brighton Pride. It transpired this man was Betty swollocks (a drag queen) by evening and this certainly was an interesting turn of scenario. I think Ross forgot he was in diverse and modern Brighton for a minute, but awkward teeth-sucking is all part of the sweetness of his surrealist sirloins (reference to his butchers meat euphemisms).
His opinion of the i360 as “stick on a bubble” received praise and cheer throughout as everyone clapped in merry community of hatred for the council’s newest multi-million investment. “I guess they called it i360 because B360 just sounds like a Sh*t road,” Ross said to much agreement.
If you have only experienced Ross Noble on panel shows on tut telly, do go and see the real thing in person, if not just for that personified tangled mane that sits on his head, his brain dump was the best dump I ever had. Well Ross; “it was nice to see you, to see you nice.”
To find out tour dates in the Uk head to the Official Ross Noble Website Here.
