Ross Noble is at the Kings Theatre

You might not know his name, but you'll certainly know his hair.

Ross Noble possesses the biggest barnet in modern comedy - a flowing pre-Raphaelite mass that makes him the perfect candidate for shampoo ads or Brian May lookalike contests.

But it's unlikely you'll ever see the super-talented 26-year-old plying his trade anywhere other than live on stage.

Unusually nowadays, where the progression to quiz show host or low-grade sitcom star seems an almost compulsory career route, Noble is something of a purist.

Bar the odd chat show appearance, the likeable Geordie would rather not get involved with that side of things.

"I've had loads of offers for sitcoms. They always try and get me to play the wacky neighbour. You have to keep yourself as far away from that as possible," says Noble, now back on the road in the UK with his Sonic Waffle show following a sell-out season at the Melbourne Comedy Festival this spring.

"The trouble with TV is that it is such a massively time-consuming process. There are so many people involved and by the time you actually get to the point where people are watching it and being entertained - the very reason you're there - you don't get the reaction. You don't see them being entertained, and it's taken up weeks and months of your life.

"If I didn't do my thing in front of an audience, I think I'd go a bit mental."

Isn't there a danger of that anyway, performing every night for months on end?

"I can handle that. That's a healthy sort of madness."

One of the other good things about not being on TV, he reckons, is the quality of the crowd he attracts. No one is there just to see a famous person.

"People come along to have a really good night of comedy, not to stare at some bloke they've seen dressed in a crap costume in some stupid sitcom.

"Basically, I don't get the element that will only go and see a show because it's some light entertainment bloke in a spangly suit saying 'Here's a joke for you...'"

Audiences everywhere seem to have clasped the Time Out Award winner to their bosom, won over by his freewheeling improvisational genius and, of course, his extreme funniness.

He has been performing Sonic Waffle since last August - but has never done the same version twice.

"Every night is different. Every night you have a completely different set of things to stimulate you.

"People often say 'Don't you get sick of it?' But that's weird, from my point of view. I get to go all over the world, I'm in a different place every time, and my job is having a laugh for a couple of hours."

Events such as September 11 and the Iraq war have been incorporated into the show, but Noble insists he always goes for laughs rather than the appalled silence.

"I don't really talk about the events themselves, because it's easier to get a shock rather than a good laugh.

"When they were trying to find al-Qaeda, for instance, I was talking about how Bin Laden was living in a cave like a rabbit and they were going in there and trying to coax him out with lettuce."

He says that a joke is only ever offensive if it refers to an event which has directly affected the audience.

"There was a woman in the papers the other day killed by stampeding cows. The headline said 'Woman killed by cows' and that struck me as really funny.

"But if somebody's relative had just been killed by a cow, they wouldn't find that funny at all."

Noble has been seeing the funny side of things since he was a child. A "bit of a weirdo" at school ("people tended to keep out of my way") with a shaved head and a bleached blond fringe that reached to his chin, he was part of a street double-act before getting his first live gig aged 15.

Being a natural born comic, though, can present certain difficulties.

"I'm not completely unfeeling, but I do find it hard not to say what's in my head, which is great when you're doing a gig - that's what makes a show special.

"It's not always so great in day-to-day life.

I was checking in at a hotel once and there was a bloke having a heart attack. The bloke on reception was shouting out his room number: '414's having a bloody heart attack!'

"Then, without missing a beat, he turned to us and said: 'Sorry, lads, not enough rooms for you all'. I couldn't help saying: 'I think there's one about to come free'.

"You have to be very careful, especially when somebody's telling you something serious. It's been a big problem for me in the past, especially with girlfriends.

"Fortunately I'm now in a relationship where that isn't a problem."

Noble's comedy, like his free-flowing hair, just comes tumbling out. Oh, and about that hair, which must surely earn him envious glares in the street - how exactly do you keep it in shape?

"I get up, go in the shower and then, slowly over the course of the day, it dries."

Ross Noble is at the Kings Theatre, Southsea tomorrow. Box office: 023 9282 8282