Comedy review: Jason Manford

ASIDE from a section on the summer riots and who was really to blame (step forward Jamie Oliver), the overwhelming majority of Jason Manford’s two-hour set could be dropped into any moment during the last 25 years. Which can’t help sounding like a criticism, but could just as easily be viewed as a compliment to the “timeless” quality of his material.

At his most playful and confident when mixing it with the more unruly members in the Playhouse stalls, Manford struggles a little when forcing himself to find new angles on some more familiar topic areas. It’s hard to believe that a contemporary comic would even attempt to draw comparisons between cats and dogs (never mind broach the subjects of airport security and supermarket self-scanning) and while more often than not he does show us the funny, Manford can seem weighed down by the impossibility of finding endless seams of humour in our everyday tedium.

More successful are the pained observations about his family: the brother who once sat in a seat reserved for a dead man; parents who never disappoint with an inappropriate remark. While he asserts that no one would consider calling a boy Barry, Keith or Jeff nowadays, the people’s comedy of Jason Manford will never go out of fashion.