CityLife

Jason Manford: I'm Turning Into My Dad

Jason Manford

Jason Manford
Apollo
November 10, 2010

The higher your profile gets, the more the tabloid gossip columns tend to follow you around.

It’s a learning curve that Manchester comedian Jason Manford is finding out about the hard way since becoming a prime time TV presenter on BBC magazine programme The One Show. And for a minute, it looks like fame is coming back to haunt him at his stand up show, too.

“How’s Debra?” yells a heckler from the balcony at Jason’s second sold out night at the Apollo, referring to his admission last week that he had exchanged cheeky messages with fan Debra McNamee on Twitter.

There’s an immediate stony look on Manford’s face, but it’s not this tense stand-off that proves the most interesting part – it’s the immense skill with which he recovers, turning a five minute encore into 15 minutes of some of his funniest material.

It’s a shame that the heckle had to happen at all. Not only because it becomes the unavoidable headline of the night, but because Manford himself consistently manages to be funny without resorting to cheap, controversial one-liners.

“I’m not like Frankie Boyle,” he rightly points out as he engages with the front row. “I don’t come out and say, ‘You’re fat, you’re thick, you’re ugly, you’re ginger... goodnight’.”

Instead, his skill is in setting up camaraderie (this evening, he unites the crowd in cheers about the Manchester football derby, parenthood and marriage) and finding the collective laugh.

His observations are uncommonly sharp but pleasingly everyman, few better than his critiques of his terrible British failings or of the mundanities of everyday life.

Politeness, for instance, means he’ll never ask a passenger to move out of his pre-booked seat on the train. “I’ll just stand there having an inner monologue,” he frowns. “I definitely booked a seat, but I definitely didn’t book a ****head sat in it.”

His rant about supermarket self-scan machines is a light bulb moment all round, his colour-coding systems for baby poo based on Dulux charts or curries less so.

Manford’s dad, a regular subject of his show, makes his uniquely funny presence known on several occasions, as do memories of Manford’s naive youth.

There’s a long geographical way to go for this tour yet – including three more sold out nights at the Apollo – and there’s definitely room to tinker. But if Manford can self-critique even half as well as he can handle hecklers, this show could become his most engaging yet.