Ross Noble was starting out when he first played York, compering shows at the Comedy Shack. Now he's topping the bill in his own show.

WHAT do Patrick Marber, playwright, The Day Today star, actor and comic, and Mike Bennett, York author, museum curator, comedy promoter and performer, have in common?

Both played a role in the rise of Newcastle comedian Ross Noble, now an award-endowed headline act who will be performing his Sonic Waffle show at the Grand Opera House on Thursday, but once a lowly turn at Bennett's Comedy Shack club in the Bonding Warehouse cellars.

"I ended up compering shows for Mike after doing an open spot at Patrick's show where he read out all these jokes that Mike had written down to use as the compere for the night!" recalls the lank-haired Geordie.

Ah, fond memories of his early days in comedy. "I remember compering Jeff Green and Lee Evans at the Bonding Warehouse, and Lee came off dripping with sweat having done his Bohemian Rhapsody routine in that small space," Ross says.

No shower to be had, Lee clambered on to the sink in the dressing room. "There he was, naked with his bum to the window, washing himself with one of those things you wash potatoes with, and people were walking by this window saying 'Oh, there's Lee Evans's bum'!"

Noble's career has moved on apace since those Nineties days, culminating in his winning the Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Best Comedy and the New Zealand Comedy Guild Award for Best International Comic last year.

There was never room for doubt that he would not survive in the lion's den of comedy: "It's one of those things where you have to be relentless. Performing has to become the all-encompassing point of your life, like when it's costing you more to go to places to play than you get on the night," he says. "Maybe I've had three or four dodgy gigs in a row where you go 'Oh, blimey', but luckily that hasn't happened for a while."

Not that Ross has entered comedy's big-bucks league just yet. He was a little late for this phone interview appointment, after calling in at Halfords for new wiper blades for his car.

"I'd been saying for six months 'I must change them', and with the gritters out on the road, I was having to squirt bottled water on to the windscreen to see out," he says.

"I frequently use Evian, which is gloriously decadent, and it's a bit of a skill trying to get the water on to the screen. If you tip it too high, it just goes over the top, so those sports bottles work best."

There goes Noble, speaking in free form, the scatting jazz style of comedy that he has made his own in Chicken Master, Slackers Playtime in 2001 and now Sonic Waffle.

After its debut at the 2002 Edinburgh Fringe, Noble's latest show transferred to the West End and he will be "sonic waffling" on the road from January 23 to the hometown finale in Newcastle on March 17 more than 40 shows later.

How he enjoyed his run at the Vaudeville Theatre last year.

"My favourite thing was being able to walk past this huge sign for Chicago at the next-door theatre and then seeing this big picture of me on a flying pig. There'd be 40 of them next door thinking, 'Damn it, Noble has that theatre all to himself'. Yes, just me talking for two hours!"

While his face is becoming more familiar - fruit stallholders have started to recognise him, he says - Ross reckons his level of fame is just right at present. "I'm in the position where I can fill theatres but I don't pop up in the tabloids. I can still walk the streets and that's perfect. So it's like having all the up sides with none of the downs," he says.

Happiness is a tour called Sonic Waffle, the return to BBC Radio 4 of his Ross Noble Goes Global travel tales and a working trip to Australia as soon as the British dates conclude.

Ross Noble, Sonic Waffle Tour 2003, Grand Opera House, York, February 13, 8pm. Tickets: £12, ring 01904 671818.

Updated: 12:36 Friday, February 07, 2003