2003 Ross Noble and Jeff Green review
Jeff Green’s fantastic performance last year was one of the Cabaret highlights and he returns this year with virtually the same material, which is a very slight pity because he’s normally so inventive. Still, it’s all centred around the recently published book about relationships, families, shagging, getting drunk, shagging, arguments, knob gags, living with people and more shagging. Oh, did I mention there was some shagging in it?
OK, well, yeah, there’s some shagging in it and it’s dead funny so what does it matter if the jokes are a bit stale, he still knows how to make a room wince and that’s just great. For those of you who have never returned home drunk and stinking expecting beery nicotine and kebab breath to light the passion fires of the one you love, go try it tonight and make sure that you have chilli sauce on your fingers if you’re going to indulge in the delicacies of foreplay. It’s what Jeff would recommend.
Someone really should tell Malcolm Hardee that he’s not funny. Is he on here year after year for his comedic ability? This man’s compere skills make TV Studio warm up men seem like radically hilarious clowns. Foul-mouthed and brainless, he’s a witless moron who’s unnecessarily opinionated views of the acts he precedes or follows are about as welcome as ants in your tent and just as irritating. Hasn’t anyone told him that the same gags that bombed last year aren’t going to go full-on this year either?
When he doesn’t get a laugh, he just ups the ‘f*ck’ and ‘C*nt’ quota, but don’t even ‘tut’ at him in irriated boredom, it only just encourages him. No matter, this stale and thoroughly unlikeable old fool bravely continues regardless. Even the hecklers can’t be bothered with him, which is saying something at a place like this. Clichéd as it may seem, Malcolm Hardee is one of the reasons we have contraceptives given away free here, because if you’re not careful you might have a baby and it could grow up like him. It’s enough to make you consider celibacy.
Ross Noble, on the other hand, has no such difficulties. The long-haired Geordie is one of those comedians who totally and utterly intoxicates his audience and survives on surfing his own surreal wave of silliness. There isn’t a heckle that can’t be taken apart by this man and spat back with double doses of venom and cruelty. The poor unfortunate drunk guy in denim, Moggy, has lost his mates, but Ross Noble makes him lose his direction, his mind and his dignity. Seeing people picked on is rarely this much fun.
When performing stand-up rather than just being the darling of the radio chat show and TV quiz circuit, Noble shares a certain section of observational style with Billy Connolly in an obscure way. He can begin on a run of the mill topic like “mah mayet gerrin’ shagged bah this blerk…” and by the time he’s halfway through, has gone off on a huge number of different tangents and directions, before returning to intermittently stumble upon the same story at exactly the point he left off, then turning it around in another direction entirely.
Seeing him perform live is truly watching a master ad-libber at work. You can’t write stuff like Ross Noble’s material, it just springs up and develops from nowhere, fuelled by his acute sense for the absurd and our desire for comedy that doesn’t just cross barriers but knocks them flying.
Laugh until your face is sore and be glad that it’s someone else being picked on and not you. You weren’t safe after all; he was just biding his time.
Paul Mills
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