Friday afternoon saw the North-Eastern comedy circuit’s favourite son instigate a Latitude, nay, a festival first – a  full-on falafel flashmob on an unsuspecting vegan food stand. This bizarre event served as the climax to Noble’s hugely successful gig in a packed out Comedy Arena. Not one to be constrained by pre-prepared material, the comic delivered a hugely enjoyable ramble through his train of thought – touching on some of the most eccentric, surreal and downright odd subject matter you’re likely to hear emanating from the human mind. Going off on tangent after tangent, his stream of consciousness comedy saw him focus on - amongst other things - the uselessness of wind chimes, the uselessness the decorative gold plinths festooning the stage and Mariah Carey singing whale song, as a well as fending off a heckler’s accusations that he was starting to look like an ‘Geordie Russell Brand’ (which, although much less stylish, he sort of is). At one point, he went as far as sending one audience member around the crowd to distribute as much complimentary backstage Red Bull as possible, much to the consternation of by-standing festival officials.

The set was hugely inclusive and interactive, Noble regularly gaining material from the actions of the crowd both inside and outside the tent. This peaked when, at the end of the set, he led the crowd through a rendition of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’  before vaulting the stage barrier, starting a conga line outside the tent and leading it around the festival site. Only a few metres outside the Comedy Arena, this descended into something a resembling a bull run, with thousands of revellers following  their hero to a Felafel stand to chant, en-mass, ‘Sausage Rolls!’ at the stall’s bemused and probably offended vegetarian staff. The strange euphoria created by this saw our Geordie hero lifted aloft the crowd and, before the downright weirdness of the situation had hit any of them, he was gleefully crowdsurfing above their heads. Humankind has never, and probably will never see such an event again – Noble’s Latitude appearance was a surrealist triumph.


Francis Whittaker