Ross Noble is brilliant.
There; I said it. The cat's out of the bag people. Though, truth be told, that cat has been roaming the globe for quite some time now. And here we were, a diverse gathering of 'Noblists' at the regal Concert Hall at QPAC (26 March), to witness the Master of Tangents.
Inside the first 15 minutes we were served up by our gregarious host a smattering of Noble-Tangentlements, frog-leaping faster than a coke-addled Frogger, covering: a camp, Swiss flugelhorn player; a sexy, pony-tailed, Jesus lookalike – who just happened to be a carpenter – and his parole payroll-officer girlfriend (“simply the most beautiful people” Ross purred); and a purple blob who was in a fact a lady (cue mimed shovel-digging).
By the time Ross had settled into his first joke (forget the rant against Jetstar; Ross eventually squared that score in the second stanza of the show) about his sweaty balls (you had to be there folks, trust me) we'd been introduced to the piss-drinking, Aussie-bogan-devolving-into-a frog, the bingo pensioners and the chilled, Aussie gangster (“I couldn't be arsed pulling a drive-by maaaate!”).
After the 'piss' intermission, Ross was crowd-gifted a metre-long Toblerone (his manager would prefer cocaine and prostitutes guys) and two, squeaky-toy pigs who literally stole the show for ten minutes (the Queen 'We Will Rock You' rendition was epic) as Ross mused about going next door (Playhouse) to interrupt the performance of 'Wicked': “these guys ['Wicked' cast] have been training, rehearsing for months, and my biggest laughs are for two, squeaking-pig toys!”.
By night's end, Ross Noble had entertained the “whitest crowd ever” with a hilarious and at (many) times, tear-inducing array of stories (from the 'JUICE! JUICE!' story featuring his two-year-old daughter to the bed-time 'I want krill' demands) proving once more that he is, indeed, the Godfather of Tangentlemen, and why he's the perennial Noble Tangent Prize winner.
Ross is currently touring the country; I strongly urge you to get along to one of his shows; just don't get humped by a wizard along the way.
