Ross Noble, a man who has forged a living from going off on a tangent, brought his Mindblender show and a new steampunk-inspired set to the Dome last night as part of Dave’s Brighton Comedy Festival.

Things got off to a characteristically bizarre start as Noble was first heckled by a three-month-old baby, before taking it upon himself to rearrange several members of the audience in response to one lady’s perfume allergy!

The interaction with the audience continued throughout the set, with Noble picking up on every reaction and jeer and using it to take the show in wild new directions (one call from the audience led to a particularly impressive adlibbed poem about a sleepy wizard). Some of the themes may have seemed at first like obvious current material for a stand-up – Jimmy Savile, Fifty Shades of Grey – but as usual things soon took a curious turn.

It wasn’t long before Noble noted the audience tilting their heads at 45 degrees in response to his bizarre descriptions of Dr Christian from Channel 4’s Embarrassing Bodies fornicating with a stegosaurus, the people of Brighton travelling underneath the city in disco tunnels and Hunter S Thompson negotiating the Gladiators ‘Travelator’.

Noble gives the impression of a deranged nut, rambling aimlessly, but his ability to remember stories he started hours earlier proves just how sharp he really is. After all, there are very few comics who could kick off a show with an allude to ‘disco terrapin technology’, only returning to finish their explanation two and a half hours later.

Performed on Tuesday 9th October 2012 at Brighton Dome.

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