Looking at the bright side of life: Jason Manford on growing up in the tough part of Manchester
Being raised in a tough part of Manchester hasn’t stopped Jason Manford having a laugh at the world, writes
WHEN Jason Manford was a guest on the most recent season of Top Gear, he couldn’t resist joking about an earlier segment in which a million dollar convertible is seen bursting spontaneously into flames. “I’m from Manchester,” he proffered “I’ve seen plenty to burning cars.”
The comedian wasn’t exaggerating. He grew up in the city’s notorious “Triangle Of Death”. Gangland shootings were a fact of life and many of his former classmates spent their twenties banged up for armed
robbery.
“It was all police and riots, people screaming and doors being locked,” he recalls. “Not all the time — but you certainly saw things no child should see. Every so often, you’d hear a classmate was in some armed robbery. Of course, I don’t remember any of that. I just look back and think, ‘Well we had a right laugh’.”
As one of the UK’s most in demand stand-ups, Manford (36) has long since left that life behind. In fact, he can’t help noticing the gulf between his upbringing and the comfortable circumstances of his five children.
The tension between where he has come from and his present life is the subject of his latest tour, Muddle Class, which he brings to the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny in June, with a nationwide tour
following in September
“It’s about being from the wrong side of the tracks and winning this show business lottery – and then wanting to instill your values in your kids while at the same time letting them enjoy the things you didn’t get. A lot of parents wrestle with that I think – ‘I want to give my kids what I didn’t have but I don’t want to spoil them’.”
Manford is a close as there is to a natural born comedian. He was collecting glasses as a teenager in a comedy club in the Manchester suburb of Salford when he found himself pressed into service when a opening act failed to show up. With just seven minutes of material prepared, he went down a storm – and since then has effortlessly conquered the UK’s super competitive circuit.
“People say you’re rubbish at the beginning. No, I was alright at the beginning. Okay, I’m better now. But I remember getting laughs straight away and getting gigs straight away.”
That isn’t to say he hasn’t had his troubles. Manford became a tabloid target in 2010 when it emerged he had sent “sexual” tweets to fans. Shortly afterwards he resigned as a presenter of co-host of BBC’s The One Show to spend time with his family. He has since divorced and remarried.
He rejects the “tears of clown” theory that comedians are all secretly miserable and go on stage in an attempt to fill their empty souls with affirmation. That said, the life can be solitary – and it can take its toll.
“I don’t think it’s a dark side thing,” he says. “They do say there are a lot of mental health problems with performers in general. Part of that come down to the rush of being on stage. On tour, the audience are often the first people I’ve spoken to all day. Maybe I’ve been at the hotel or gone to the cinema by myself. All of a sudden 2,000 people are cheering you for two hours. All the endorphins are flowing and then you go off and suddenly you’re by yourself again.
“Whether it’s alcohol or gambling or sex or overeating or drugs … with any of those things you are trying to fill the gaps between the gigs. The truth is nothing else beats the rush on stage. That’s where a lot of that comes from. Sometimes my wife will say to me, ‘are you alright - you seem a bit down?’ And I am a bit down – maybe I’ve had a gig the night before and all the adrenaline has dissipated.”
Sometimes it’s best to push on he says. “If you’re not careful you can start back engineering reasons for why you’re sad. ‘Maybe it’s because I got divorced or because my grand-dad died when I was young’. Your brain is going ‘what’s the reason?’. And it’s just because. That’s the real mind melt.”
Manford may be wildly popular but he isn’t quite critically acclaimed. His material is apolitical and, from the North of England, he is perceived from within in the snooty London media bubble as coming from the rough and tumble working man’s club tradition.
“People ask me if I have any jokes about Brexit?,” he says. “I don’t have any jokes about Brexit.”
He has no wish to be a truth-speaking critical darling in the vein of Stewart Lee he says. “You’ll see people like that having a go at Michael McIntyre. And while it might be perceived as punching up because Michael McIntyre is so successful, Michael McIntyre might regard it as Stewart Lee punching down because he [Lee] is so much more critically acclaimed than Michael McIntyre.”
His idol and mentor is Peter Kay. The Phoenix Nights star was already becoming famous when he headlined the Salford club where Manford collected glasses as a teenager. After failing to get into university,
Manford asked Kay for advice and the older comic helped him secure an audition for a media and performance course at the University of Salford“I flunked my A-levels quite hard. My girlfriend got pregnant and then had a miscarriage. It was just awful and a really tough time for her. It really affected me and it just all went wrong at a-levels. I didn’t get into any of the universities I want too – places like Bristol and Liverpool.
“Peter said to me the great thing about university is that you learn a bit about the craft but you also have a buffer before hitting the real world. He was an alumni and helped get me an audition. As he said, it was just the place between childhood and the real world. I left university knowing I wanted to be a comedian.”
