Where do you start with Ross Noble?

From Sunday night’s performance at the Ipswich Regent he certainly delivered on being known as Britain’s number-one surrealist comedian. No-one went home from the performance without a large smile on their face – he was constantly funny.

He’s a heavyweight comic with an armoury of tricks – his sheer energy and physicality generated a lot of laughs but that doesn’t cover enough of what he’s about.

The timing, impersonating and endless stream of consciousness left me and hundreds of others never wanting the show to end.

What gave the evening such vibrancy was Noble’s fizz but also the show’s format. He relies on the audience – individual’s appearances and heckles – for much of the content. He picked on a woman in a bright outfit with matching bird puppet and someone who happened to be her colleague sat a few seats away.

This cued several jokes about their home town of Stowmarket, much to the audience’s delight.

Although on many occasions I was left pleasantly bemused with some of his absurd outbursts; Noble also ventured onto less stable ground with gags about convicted showbiz sex abusers.

His enthusiasm, child-like imagination, baggy clothes and curly locks endeared him to people and meant there was never a dull moment in the more than two hour show.

Matt Hunter