Ross Noble stalks the stage, hair flying, bouncing ideas and jokes around the old Palais Theatre, leading the audience on a surreal trip with more hook turns than the Hoddle grid.

He notes early on that without an audience, he would closely resemble the type of man you might see ranting and flailing alone outside a train station, and it's true.

Noble's shows are largely improvised, and he is all arms and legs. He is not afraid to push some boundaries – religion is not off-limits – but his show is more about fart jokes than commentary.

More than anything he is intensely, delightfully, deliriously silly.

When he appeared in an episode of Julia Zemiro's Home Delivery on the ABC last year, and returned to his primary school, he remembered showing up one day on a unicycle and being widely mocked by his peers.

He is still that boy, but now they're laughing with him.