thu 28/03/2024

Jason Manford, Hammersmith Apollo | reviews, news & interviews

Jason Manford, Hammersmith Apollo

Jason Manford, Hammersmith Apollo

Observational ancedotery from Twitter's keenest fan

In the course of his decade-long career Jason Manford has benefited from the British public’s appetite (eagerly fed by television producers) for inoffensive and family-friendly comics. Similar stand-ups, for instance Michael McIntyre and Peter Kay, have even become millionaires by providing this kind of comedy, and until recently there was no reason to believe that Manford was going to do anything other than follow in their footsteps, particularly after he was made co-host of BBC One’s The One Show, which regularly pulls in more than four million viewers. Television exposure like that, as any comic will tell you, means you start playing stadium gigs sooner rather than later.

But it’s a different type of exposure that has brought the matey (and married) Mancunian broader fame; he has lately developed a keen interest in Twitter and Skype and last week, after one too many revelations about the interesting uses he found for these social networks while hooking up with his female fans, the corporation dispensed with his services.

Fair play to the man, Manford opened last night’s gig with a reference to his recent shame (as the tabloids would have it). Well, actually, before he had even opened his mouth, a man in the audience shouted, “You dirty wanker!” Manford appeared discombobulated, and then said, “Nothing you can say will humiliate me more than last week when several million people were watching me knowing I’m a wanker.”

But the heckles (some of them rather funny, if cruel) continued and Manford threatened to “fucking destroy” the hecklers; I must confess, as someone who has previously found Manford likeable but bland, things were beginning to look interesting. But then everyone settled and he continued with the show, making occasional cheeky references to his recent difficulties - “Are you allowed to say ‘Iraqi knobhead’? Least of my worries...”

Manford’s comedy, like Peter Kay's, is entirely observational, and his family - his malapropist mum, his easily confused kid brother, his baby daughters and his taciturn dad - feature heavily in an act that is essentially one anecdote after another in the “I was in Belfast/the supermarket/driving home from a gig recently...” style. The vagaries of satnav, looking like a prannet when drinking from a glass with a straw in it, the perils of late-night shopping, using the wrong bathroom product and dealing with babies’ poo all produce good lines, but after a while the format palls and you realise that some of his anecdotes are rather weak.

Not that a comic has to be cutting edge, groundbreaking or even offensive to be entertaining. Far from it - and Stewart Lee and Frankie Boyle have those areas covered anyway. But what distinguishes good observational comedy from stuff you hear down the pub is a comic’s talent for describing life's foibles in an original way, and Manford, while a charming presence on stage, appears to lack any real insight or passion. He did, though, appear genuinely angry about some of last night’s heckles but sadly didn’t even begin to “fucking destroy” those making them. Would that he had.

It will be interesting to see whether Manford uses a bruising episode in his life to develop in a new direction after this monster tour (to which extra stadium gigs have been added) finishes. As a wise person once said, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade - who knows what a thoroughly chastened comic might come up with?

Watch Jason Manford on Live at the Apollo:

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