There is so much to say about class in Britain. So why am I always hearing the same jokes about hummus and smashed avocado?
Jason Manford grew up on a council estate in Manchester and is now raising well-heeled kids in Stockport, where life is all picnic hampers and quinoa, it would seem. The contrast is playing hell with Manford’s sense of identity, and provides rich pickings to his inverted snob of a big brother. Such is the thrust of this touring show by the former 8 Out of 10 Cats and One Show man – an often amusing, very likable and stubbornly middle-of-the-road affair that also covers feeling inadequate and what to call the meal we eat halfway through the day.
Manford is in reflective mood at the top of the show, recalling his first appearance in this venue, on Live at the Apollo back in 2007. Tonight, he tells us, is another big night: he is performing to a 3,000-strong crowd dotted with fellow celebs including Rob Brydon and Imelda Staunton. But Manford doesn’t do big ego: he pins much of his appeal on politeness, humility, and matey self-deprecation. He opens by announcing the evening’s itinerary for the benefit of anyone anxious about getting home. He ends, all joking now aside, with words of comfort for those in the crowd who find life a struggle. This is comedy at its cuddliest.
Occasionally, he ventures a significant opinion. In act one, he claims that the easily offended are “spoiling comedy” because comics must now do “due diligence” on their jokes – which doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. Mainly, the opening 45 minutes are about the contrast between the man Manford wants to be, and the man he is. He wants to be slim – in fact, he gets stuck in water slides, and measures “four foot!” around the belly (“I could wear Danny DeVito as a belt!”). He wants to be a moral paragon, instead of the petty hypocrite he becomes behind the wheel of a car – as described before the interval in a fairly generic routine about driving manners.
After the break, Manford unleashes the show proper, Muddle Class – a coinage he applies to everyone who “eats olives while watching Jeremy Kyle” or “goes on a skiing trip with Ryanair”. We’re in the realm of broad class stereotyping here. Broad enough, at least – and I’m sure this is no coincidence – to encompass most of Manford’s audience. But he fashions some good laughs from the stereotypes, as he and his family play competitive tiredness, or as other dads in the playground quiz him (depressing, this) on why, as a successful entertainer, he is not sending his kids to private school.
There is an over-reliance for laughs on the supposed poshness of the same old foodstuffs; I was reminded of a recent routine by comic Tom Allen, looking at a “beige buffet” through the other end of the “muddle-class” telescope. I welcomed the change of subject when Manford turned to the parent-killing tendencies of the Disney canon, say, or the night-time antics of his daughter. The show overruns, and ends with more over-familiar chat about modern versus traditional parenting. But Manford is a thoroughly likable host, and this is a jolly enough evening treading the shallows of British class anxiety.
•Jason Manford is at Floral Pavilion, New Brighton, on 5 July. Box office: 0151-666 0000. Then touring until April.
