Dylan Moran: Dylan Moran, or mourn as it is more aptly pronounced, delights with dark humour.

Complete with tousled hair and shabby clothes, he is every bit the Bernard Black character, mythical book store owner from the hit Channel Four comedy Black Books. Judging from his angry young man repertoire, his on-screen persona is not so much acting as a magnified version of his stand up act.

The marquee was full to capacity and clearly the audience anticipated seeing him chain smoking and slurping red wine. But Moran was up there without the props of a cluttered bookshop to fall over or a comedy sidekick like Bill Bailey to berate.

He has smoothed off some of Bernard's rougher edges but some of the barbed black humour and scathing cynicism remains, which delighted the audience. His observational comedy is spot on and it is his interest in literature and the arts that obviously inspired the cult show and earned him the mantle of being the Oscar Wilde of comedy.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), Reduced Shakespeare Company

ONLY someone with the speed and endurance of Olympian Kelly Holmes would even consider trying to cram all of the Bard's works into a 90-minute show. The trio who make up the Reduced Shakespeare Company have both attributes in spades, along with superb comic timing, discipline and really, really funny material. The backbone of the show is old staples such as Hamlet done in 60 seconds (then again, backwards) and all of Shakespeare's histories, and the Bard's comedies are similarly distilled into one short, clever orgy of cross dressing, mistaken identity, lost siblings and magic. The only slightly flat segment is Titus Andronicus. The cast has a deep, if irreverent, love for Shakespeare that is unashamedly nerdy, and the show is littered with popular culture references to the likes of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

Last Stand featuring Ross Noble, Newcastle Comedy Festival. Exhibition Park. Newcastle.

SURREAL and manic Geordie comedian Ross Noble headed a list of cracking comics as a fantastic finale to the Newcastle Comedy Festival.

He jumped around from topic to topic almost as much as he does physically on stage, creating hysterical mental images as he allows the audience to explore his bizarre brain.

Noble discussed politics and religion but put it all in his freeform manner that shows his lateral thinking.

His started his career when he jumped on stage as an overactive 15-year-old for a rant at a comedy store before he was thrown out by bouncers for being underage.

And it is easy to imagine him as an attention-seeking teenager because that is how he still comes across, but it is fanatically fast-paced and funny.

It was very much the gig of the night, the festival even, and Newcastle's prodigal comedy son and all the other acts seemed to know that.

At the end of the night, Noble teamed up with Steve Frost and fellow comedians Dave Johns, Phil Nichols and Milton Jones for a bit of improvisation along the lines of Whose Line Is It Anyway?

It is performances such as this that have made the local lad done good a household name and a regular on Have I Got News For You? and Radio Four comedy shows.

Throughout the festival all of the acts have been diverse, exciting and energetic and really made for a belting atmosphere inside the temporary marquee in the centre of Newcastle.

I can't wait for next year.

Published: 12/10/2004