THE King of improvisational comedy is back!

When Ross Noble takes to the stage he has no more of an idea what he’s going to say than the bloke in row Q. He just wings it.

The result is invariably a bizarre, ludicrous and hilarious evening of Noble’s cheerfully twisted psyche, as he lurches from one surreal flight of fancy to another.

Set to appear on his Tangentman Tour at Portsmouth Guildhall on Thursday (January 29), with further dates at Basingstoke and Salisbury, Noble live and in full flow is a force of nature with his utterly anarchic way of looking at life.

In conversation, Noble is a slightly quieter version of his stage presence, less prone to wandering off topic but still enthusiastic, engaging and funny...

Anyone who’s ever seen your work before knows it’s not exactly what you’d call structured. Is there any point in asking what people can expect from Tangentleman?

“I think what I try and do is do the show that I would want to see if I went to see somebody live. I like to keep it interesting for the audience, and I like to keep it interesting for myself.

"I’m naturally quite playful in the way I approach life, and that’s what I try to bring to the live shows."

What that means is your show is basically different every night. Do you get people who come back again and again?

“Yeah, some do. The way that I work, I go on stage and I improvise stuff.

"Somebody might say something that will spark five or ten minutes or more of improv, and then out of that ten minutes, there might be one nugget of an idea that I like, which I’ll maybe expand and kick around next night.

"The best way to describe it is some comedians write out lists of words, to remind them what to say, whereas my show is like taking a bucket full of cartoon characters and melting them, then taking that melted cartoon sludge, putting it in a water pistol, and firing it into the air.”

With a scripted show, comics will often leave their best material to the end. Do you ever worry that you might finish on something that doesn’t work?

“That’s why my shows are so long. “No, that’s not good enough to end on. I’d better do another five minutes.” “Is that good enough? No. Five more.”

"But in terms of ending the show, I’ve probably started ten different stories, so I’ve got to try and get back to them to wrap them all up.

"So the problem I normally have is remembering all the things I’ve started.”

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think “I didn’t finish that bit…”?

“Oh, all the time! The great thing about Twitter is that now people will just tweet me and go “You never finished talking about that thing…” Very often I’m in the hotel bar or a Nandos or a petrol station the day after the gig, and someone will come up and go “I was at the show last night. What was that you were going on about?”

You get really involved with the audience. Do people ever come up with something that throws you?

“Yeah, all the time, but that’s the fun of it. Sometimes stuff happens that you think would completely ruin the show. For example, I did one gig where the fire alarm went off. That could knacker the whole thing. The audience had to be evacuated.

"But I went outside and just continued doing the gig while everyone was standing around. And there was a little kid there, probably about 12, with the fire engines behind me, and got people to take pictures of me, so it looked like I was saving a child’s life.

"Then we all went back in, and I came onstage and brought the fire brigade out with me like a chorus line, and we all took a bow. And I was thinking “The firemen will be loving that,” and one of them just went “Don’t go thinking you’re special, I’ve already been onstage with Goldfrapp.”

Ross Noble appears at: Portsmouth Guildhall, January 29; The Anvil, Basingstoke, February 5; Salisbury City Hall, February 15.