Ross Noble

Ross Noble: Mock the Week is "terrible"

Comedian Ross Noble has revealed why he has never appeared on BBC Two current affairs comedy Mock the Week - because he thinks the spontaneity is faked.

Ross Noble's favourite TV

The geordie surrealist on his favourite telly flights of fancy.

It's a round titled "Kit and Kaboodle" and Stephen Fry wants to know if there's a use for kitty-litter that doesn't involve cats. Alan Davies tries to be helpful, but his contribution ("In an episode of Jonathan Creek I weed into some cat litter") isn't quite what Fry is after. Ross Noble and Noel Fielding, with Australian comic Colin Lane, can't quite lift the episode off the ground.

But there are some bright bits, including Fry demonstrating martial arts on a pile of three bricks: "This takes extreme focus and extreme pain," says Fry, wincing in agony.

Ross Noble Elephant Man joke cleared by BBC Trust

Comedian Ross Noble's impression of "elephant man" John Merrick in an edition of Have I Got News For You has been ruled to be "at the margins of acceptability" by the BBC Trust.

Ross Noble: I still have nightmares about the inferno

Were it not for an apparently trivial series of events, Ross Noble, his wife Fran and baby daughter Elfie would have perished in the bushfire that destroyed their Australian home. It is four years since that traumatic day in February 2009.

Anyone casually inferring that the title of this 90-minute documentary might shed light on the inner workings of knowing music-hall surrealist Frankie Howerd is likely to be mildly disappointed. The Lost Tapes is far more interested in his stage-and-screen career than his occasionally tumultuous private life. That said, the plethora of footage unearthed here is an absolute treat for any fan of British comedy. Bruce Forsyth, Tim Vine, Ross Noble, Roy Hudd, Galton & Simpson and the eternally youthful Barry Cryer guide us through clips ranging from Frankie's stint at Peter Cook's Establishment Club to his scenes - sadly left on the cutting-room floor - with Wendy Richard and Paul McCartney in The Beatles' Help! to footage of another musical misfire in his role opposite The Bee Gees in the regrettable promotional movie that accompanied their Cucumber Castle LP. Other nuggets include clips from 1973 Up Pompeii! rehash Whoops Baghdad and a 1976 sitcom made for Canadian TV.

DVD review: Ross Noble - Nonsensory Overload

Ross Noble's new DVD, Nonsensory Overload, does exactly what it says on the tin. The amount of material included on this three-disc package is almost as mental as the Geordie comedian himself.

Ross Noble: "I'm in my own little bubble"

Writer and comedienne Gráinne Maguire spoke to fellow comic Ross Noble about his stand-up jubilee, the changing face of comedy and why he's not chasing television.