Comedy review: Jason Manford

TIME has dampened hecklers' desire to taunt Jason Manford about the tabloid accusations of Twitter flirting that prompted him to quit The One Show. His set remains dotted with self-deprecating quips – an early routine about Andy Gray's sacking from Sky Sports is essentially Manford's attempt to address his own indiscretions. But his affable, man of the people persona has been compromised.

When he launches into a stock routine on parental responsibilities, the sort of mildly cheeky accusation that women make too much of the demands of mothering and that fathers suffer too, one woman in the crowd isn't having it. But he extricates himself from the war of words by humiliating her and demanding that she buy into the convention of trite observational humour – that he frequently doesn't believe the premises of his jokes himself, that they're merely setups for gags.

Of course, this is true of plenty of comedians' material. Still, the Mancunian, guiltier of laziness rather than sexism, is not going to be thanked for foregrounding the formula. And he'll never be afforded quite the same ironically winking, benefit of the doubt again, at least not with some in his arena audiences.

He can dismiss this stony-faced "15 per cent" as the evening's "designated drivers". But if he's going to fully recover his popularity, you hope he'll strive for a more ambitious direction than insipid musings on putting the bins out, automatic toilet doors on trains and accidentally using his wife's shampoo.