This piece originally appeared in The Demon newspaper Issue 111. I won a Student Publication Award for it.
Famous for his stand-up and infamous for his paisley shirts, renowned mancunian comedian Jason Manford is coming to the Leicester
Comedy Festival On the 20th of February. In ‘An Interview With Jason Manford’ he will be talking to festival overlord
Geoff Rowe. In an arrogant attempt to overshadow and out do Geoff Rowe’s
efforts, The Demon’s Comedy Editor conducted his very own Interview With Jason Manford.
You may know him from Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, Live At The Apollo or the plethora of panel shows he’s been on. Or you may know him from the two stand-up DVDs he’s released. If you’re lucky, you’ll have seen him perform live stand-up. Manford is currently touring his show First World Problems and for him live stand-up is what it’s all about. ‘The live is always better.’ He said. ‘You’re your own, writer, director and editor.’ He still enjoys television work, and said that it’s ‘a lot more prescriptive, but you need telly to make them come and see you live. ‘
Leicester is a city that he’s fond of. It’s the city that proved that he can do stand-up comedy. After gigging around Manchester in the early months of his career, Leicester was the first place he gigged which wasn’t in the North. To his relief his jokes weren’t ‘too northern’ and, not only did the jokes go down well, he won the title of ‘Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year 2000’. ‘That cut out from the Leicester Mercury is still on my Nana’s wall.’ He said with a chuckle.
Manford is sometimes called a ‘northern comic’. What this means isn’t clear, as Manford thinks that there isn’t the black and white divide between north and south that there used to be. He says that the old divide was characterised by the differences between Jack Dee and Peter Kay, but now there’s not such a big difference between John Bishop and Michael McIntyre or Sarah Millican and Micky Flanagan. This is partly to do with television, as comedians have to make their material accessible to a national audience. Manford does, however, concede that there’s an extra ten minutes of material which he only performs in Manchester.
Perhaps it would be more apt to refer to him as a ‘British Comic’ now, as he’s performing shows internationally and knows that the north - south divide of a tiny island like Britain wouldn’t be of interest to foreign crowds. He can’t do material about towns or television programmes overseas, and up to an hour of material has to be cut from his shows. He’s still well received though, ‘relationships and being a parent and the little idiosyncrasies of life and the first world problems I talk about in my show, they’re sort of universal.’ He said.
He’s well known for his everyman, observational humour, but it must be difficult to keep the material relatable if you’re a famous comedian who plays arenas and Royal Variety Performances. This sometimes bothers Manford, but he still leads a fairly normal life. His kids go to the same school he went to and he’s still surrounded by the same family. Last year he went to see Jerry Seinfeld’s arena tour and described sitting in the audience with people who could be unemployed or on minimum wage, listening to a man who’s worth 750 million dollars, and wondering how Seinfeld’s observational comedy could possibly reach them: ‘What he does really well is he talks about relationships. It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got, that sort of thing doesn’t really change.’ Jokingly, Manford admitted that some of the problems he observes wouldn’t be very relatable and he doubts he’ll ever start a routine with the words: ‘My reverse camera doesn’t work in the rain’.
Manford’s CV covers far more than just stand-up comedy; in 2012 he played Pirelli in the musical Sweeney Todd. This required him to both act and sing live on stage. He was particularly worried about performing in front of the rest of the cast, which included Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton. It’s easy to see why these well known actors may have looked down on Manford, perhaps thinking that he only got the part because he was on TV. By the end of the first rehearsal, however, he was sure that he proved that that was not the case, saying ‘I saw they were looking for someone to play the part, asked for an audition and got it. No one went “get me Jason Manford” because it’s a part you’d never associate with me: an opera singing Italian barber.’ ‘After becoming friends with them all and having a great couple of months with them, they all thought “he’s got this because he’s good at it”.’
He also revealed that he is attempting to write his own musical about the highs and lows of stand-up comedy. He’s not daunted by the idea of writing the storyline, which would closely resemble his own life story, but says that finding someone to write the music and the lyrics would prove to be a challenge. He also finds it difficult to find time to write the show ‘It’s very difficult to do something in this job just off your own back, where you’re not getting paid. I know that sounds a bit silly, but there are so many deadlines and so many things people have paid for. Like, I’m writing a sitcom for ITV at the moment. They give you money for that, so you have to do that.’ Manford sometimes worries about this unglamorous side to a comedian’s work, saying ‘There’s definitely times when you’re sat in your office for days on end writing, thinking: I’m sure I got into this job so I didn’t end up in an office behind a desk, and I’ve ended up in an office behind a desk with a deadline, like all my friends.’
According to Manford’s autobiography Brung Up Proper, he had a fairly politicised upbringing as his father would regularly take him on political marches. Growing up in an environment like this, it seems strange that Manford didn’t become a more political comedian. ‘There’s part of me that would, this’ll sound silly, love my act to be cleverer sometimes. You know, I’m a clever lad, I’m well read. When it comes to translating that to stand-up, I just can’t do it.’ He said. He likes the work of Stewart Lee, Mark Steel and Andy Zaltzman, but is apprehensive about performing similar material himself due to his style of comedy: ‘When you’re an everyman comic you don’t want to rock the boat, even if you’ve got a big opinion on something you think; I don’t want to lose some of the audience by slagging off David Cameron just because I don’t like him.’ It would be easy to say that Manford has done it all, he’s played arenas, he’s done the Royal Variety. He’s made it. He’s wary of this though, and is always seeking to do better, so there may come a point when he decides to unleash his political side. He envies Louis CK’s abilities, and said: ‘My set, I feel like I’m going ‘”look, here’s loads of funny things that happened” and I watch Louis CK and he’s like “here’s loads of funny things that happened, and here’s why they happened.”’
There’s recently been a report which suggests that psychotic traits are particularly common in comedians. This doesn’t come as a surprise to Manford: ‘You’ve always got two minds as a comic. Part of you is full of ego, full of bravado, full of “I am the funniest man in this room” and then the other part of your brain is “I hope I’m funny” and self-doubt and pity. It’s a balance. If one of those things tips the balance that makes you not a comic, it has to be 50/50 all the time.’ In a world with Google and Twitter, this must be a difficult balance to maintain. Manford likes to avoid googling himself, but sometimes gives in to the compulsion to do so, jokingly describing it as ‘like mental self-harm.’
Manford enjoyed his time
performing in arenas, but has decided to stop. ‘I’d rather play five nights at
the Manchester Apollo than one night at the arena I think.’ He said. He feels
that it was the right time in his career to play them and that, with his fellow
comedians embarking on arena tours, there was an element of ‘keeping up with
the Joneses’. ‘After playing them I thought, you know what, I worry that greed
overtakes creativity with that decision making.’ He said. He concluded that ‘If
financially it worked out that you could do a tour of just little 100 seaters
then I’d do that.’