Abnormal service will be resumed

I noticed yesterday that it's been a while since I've been here. I've no idea why. Perhaps I need to be a bit more interesting?










Last Friday we had a family trip down to the Leeds Grand Theatre to see Blood Brothers and had an extremely enjoyable night.

I was the only one of the four to have never seen Willy Russell's musical. My parents had seen it before and my younger brother was taken to the show on a school trip to London but for me, it was a completely new experience.

The performance itself was excellent with a cast including Z-listers such as Anthony Costa, once of Blue fame.

Apart from that...erm.... lets see.....

The pilot light on the central heating won't stay on........ erm........ I managed to find somewhere that sells ping-pong balls...... and erm......... I've book the annual trip to France (with a stop-off in Barcelona) to see the Leeds Rhinos play the Catalan Dragons in Perpignan - but that escapade will be covered another day.

One brilliant comedian

Last night, your typical Leeds Rhinos fan should have probably been getting wet at Odsal, as Leeds went to Bradford for the fourth local derby of the rugby league season, but I wasn't. Instead, the Leeds Grand Theatre was the venue for my nights entertainment.




Geordie comedian Ross Noble kicked-off his latest UK tour "Nobleism" in Leeds yesterday evening and put on yet another brilliant performance.

For most people, the only time that they would have seen Noble would have been as a panel guest on 'Have I got News for You?' and even then, most people would only remember his as "that long-haired geordie bloke".

For men, having first seen him stand-up completely by accident as I watched TV at 11pm in a hotel in Bristol, I quickly ended up with his three DVD's. Yesterday was the first time I've seen him live

As a modern-day stand-up, there are not many better and it's a brand of stand-up that you don't see very often. Ask him what his act is and he'll tell you that it's not much more than four words on a piece of scrap paper. Almost all of it is based on his surroundings and crowd interaction. Some of his acts are so surreal it's untrue and whenever I see his acts I'm amazed at how his mind works sometimes.

He's certainly worlds apart from much more renowned comedians such as Ricky Gervais, who couldn't even begin to put together a spontaneous act on a par with Noble's. Something that Gervais demonstrated overtly in his "rabbit in headlights" performance at the Concert for Diana a few months back when he quickly realised that he'd run out of material with around 8 minutes of his act remaining and so, rather than embarrass himself in front of the royal family and a worldwide TV audience, he'd dance around on stage like a burke.

As for last night? An absolutely fantastic show and one that I'd recommend anyone to recommend although it may be offensive to people in the following groups:

• Leeds City Council
• Sex offenders
• Drug addicts
• Walt Disney
• Kinder Egg factory workers
• Nurses
• Daily Mail readers
• Customs officers
• The unemployed
• Roller Bladers
• Homosexuals
• Christians
  
• The cast of Starlight Express
• Airport Check-in assistants
• New Zealanders
• People who carry kazoos
• Muslims
• Taxi drivers
• Chesney Hawks
  
• Prostitutes
  
• Turtle lovers
• The town of Halifax
  
• The elderly
• Howard, the signing bloke from the Halifax commercials
  

There are probably more but anyway, here's an official clip from one of his previous tours, just for fun.