Ross Noble at Manchester Opera House 22nd and 23rd May

Ross Noble leads the audience on a new journey around crazy tangents, observational curveballs and the odd woodland animal.

If you spend ten minutes surfing the internet for reviews of Ross Noble over his past stand-up shows, you come to one of two conclusions. Either the Ross Noble camp have got hefty backhanders going out to all the critics, or this guy is something of a marvel. Time Out not only gave him a best stand-up award but called him ‘the supreme master of spontaneous stand up and the most exciting comic in the country.” The Sunday Telegraph got in on the scene with a review calling him ‘the most brilliant stand up of his generation”. The Evening Standard outdid them all with the line, “it is not hype to use the words ‘comic genius’”.

All hype aside, it is a testament to Ross Noble’s talent that he has built up a fan base that sells out venues the size of Manchester Opera House through little more than word of mouth recommendations. Noble eschews the majority of TV and radio offers he receives to concentrate on touring and has brought out a new show each year since first arriving on the scene with each of his previous shows (including Fizzy Logic, Unrealtime and Sonic Waffle) all proving hugely successful.

His new tour, Things, concentrates on things. Big things. Small things. Things that have happened to him. Things that haven’t happened to him. If that sounds vague, it is probably because Noble’s shows are defined most clearly by their lack of structure, with each night seeing the comic veer off on new and improbable tangents and flights of fancy.

If you haven’t seen Noble in action before, take a chance and book yourself some tickets. At the end of the night you may not know how he got from the show’s sensible beginnings to its bizarre ending, but you will be sure you enjoyed the ride.