21.30, Cabaret Stage

A carefully-timed trip to the Cabaret Tent to see ROSS NOBLE, planned so as to avoid the merest hint of a juggler – but disaster strikes! Jeff Green is just finishing up with a long anecdote about the inept sexual fumblings of the average drunken male, and we have to endure – yes – a juggler before welcoming the Geordie loon to the stage. Being restricted to around half an hour means that there’s no time for Noble to really delve into any prepared material – if you’ve seen him before, you’ll know the way he works ie very randomly, feeding off morsels offered to him by unwitting and often inebriated members of the audience. His one completed anecdote is about a female friend of his who had a one-night stand with a bloke who shouted “Show me where your mother lives!” during sex – he’d meant to say “Who’s your daddy?”… Somehow at one point he gets so waylaid and distracted that he’s talking about the fact that he went to a nocturnal school with a group of badgers, and Bill Oddie had to coax them out for lessons by placing meat between his teeth. The man definitely walks the tightrope between genius and insanity: Beethoven, Einstein, Noble.