CityLife

SEEING Jason Manford up on the Apollo stage gazing out at a capacity crowd of two and half thousand, the 18-year-old lad from Whalley Range who won the City Life Comedian of the Year competition in 1999 with 10 minutes of material seems very far away indeed.

That may be nine years ago and the set has got much longer, the storytelling slicker and the life experience richer but there’s still that telltale charm that won round the competition judges.

Performing both sections himself, there’s no support here, the show is a mixture of old and new material. Manford is a master of observational comedy, the choice of topics aren’t groundbreaking in their originality but that hardly matters as it’s the everyday that people recognise.

Cheeky charisma

Add to that that his routines are invested with quirks of the imagination, are effortlessly funny and imbued with that trademark cheeky charisma.

All sides of his life are drawn from; there’s an early routine about being mugged on the streets of Whalley Range, the amount of driving he does now out on the road he’s passed his test after failing six times and most recently his life with his new wife.

Subtle observations of human nature are par for the course, such as how you always think you’re the best driver and everyone else on the road is an idiot, the apparently stubborn man who still lives in the house in the middle of the M62 and there are some beautiful descriptions of the methods his dad used to keep his sons in line as kids.

 TV exposure

On being recognised, Manford notes that it doesn’t often happen but that a man in the city centre once stopped him to inquire, Are you Jason Manford? Yeah, replied Manford chuffed, ‘I work with your Dad, say hello from me.’

With the amount of TV exposure he has been getting in the last few months on 8 Out of 10 Cats and Tonightly, his anonymity is surely not going to last much longer.

It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the gigs on his tour are the capacity of this hometown gig at the Apollo.
 

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