It was a chance encounter with Peter Kay that saw Jason Manford receive invaluable advice that would change his life.
It’s now been nearly 30 years since the stand-up comic, actor and presenter first took to the stage for the first time aged just 17 – performing to an encouraging crowd at the pub he worked at in Manchester.
Reflecting on what could have understandably been an incredibly daunting foray into what would become his future career, he looks back with fondness – describing it as a ‘lovely gig’.
‘I was already working in the pub itself, so it wasn’t like I was a stranger to people. They were like “oh he’s having a go, fair enough!”. They were all behind me, which was lovely,’ he explained to Metro.
But despite eventually deciding to ‘crack on’ with pursuing a career in comedy, it was meeting Peter that set Jason off on an entirely unexpected course.
‘I finished college and had a day job and was doing stand-up in the evening,’ he recalled. ‘One night I did a gig with Peter – he was the headliner in the comedy club, and I did an open spot. Afterwards he gave me a lift home to Salford and asked if I thought about pursuing stand-up or going to university,’ he explained.
Sharing his plans with Peter to focus on stand-up, Jason was instead encouraged to attend university and study media and performance at the University of Salford, as he had done.
‘He said doing that would protect me from the real world for a little bit and I thought “ok that’s interesting”.’ A few weeks later, Jason was contacted by the head of the university, who invited him to audition for the course.
‘Even though I didn’t quite have the right results, Peter had very thoughtfully rung the university and suggested me to do it. That was a bit of a sliding doors moment. If I hadn’t of done that gig on that night, I wouldn’t have gone on to university or met my first wife or had our children…,’ he ponders.
The son of a trade union shop steward in the NHS and a courtroom stenographer, Jason was raised alongside his four siblings in Whalley Range, South Manchester.
As he puts it, laughter was a ‘big part of my upbringing’. ‘My dad and mum were very witty,’ he shares, before going on to speak about how laughter was something ‘ingrained in the working class’. ‘There’s a lot of things to cry about when you’ve got nothing, so you have to have a laugh,’ he added.
Although Jason was ‘confident and a show-off’ at home, he said he was far from the class clown and developed his comedic voice in his late teens.
However, he now shows great enthusiasm for comedy being introduced into classrooms – explaining the craft has worthwhile skills, no matter what career students eventually chase.
‘Not so everyone becomes stand-up comedians because, quite frankly, I don’t need the competition!’ he joked about his desire for the curriculum change. ‘But as far as confidence and talking in front of people is concerned, if you are the manager at Tesco you need to be able to talk to your staff and present in a logical way. I think stand-up writing and performing you are very good at editing your words so when you are sat in a long boring meeting at work where someone is going on and on…if that guy had of done stand-up comedy, that wouldn’t be happening,’ he said.
‘We make sure we don’t have that as we have to keep people engaged as we can’t afford to have them not be. So that’s why I think having stand-up taught in schools is not a bad idea.’
Despite being keen to have children learn life skills through the challenges of comedy, Jason did address one common misconception surrounding the occupation.
‘I think the biggest misconception is we get heckled all the time and that it’s debilitating when it happens. Actually, heckling is pretty rare,’ he explained. ‘It does happen in the clubs a bit more than the theatres, but you are the only one amplified with a microphone and often they’ve had a drink, and you haven’t… so the odds are weighed in your favour.’
After first bursting onto our screens as a team captain on the panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats in 2007, Jason has since gone on to present a string of shows, including Comedy Rocks, Show Me the Funny, A Question of Sport: Super Saturday, and Bigheads, as well as Children in Need and the Royal Variety Performance.
Throughout that time, he’s also starred in a series of stage musicals on the West End and across the country, including Sweeney Todd, The Producers and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He’s also currently preparing to star in Something Rotten in Manchester this summer, as well as his current comedy tour.
Despite his long list of career highlights, are there any more bucket list items he’d love to tick off in terms of his comedy career?
‘I’ve done a few gigs in America and when you perform to a group of people who don’t know who you are already and seeing if your comedy transcends the cultures… I think that’s something I’d like to try at some point,’ he explained.
He also said he’d love to appear in a classic like Les Misérables or The Phantom of the Opera on the West End, while also expressing his interest in a Celebrity Traitors appearance.
‘I don’t know how far down the list I am, but I know there were a few chats about it on an agents level. You get to a point in your career where you just want to do shows that you would watch and that your kids would also love to see you in, and that is definitely one of them,’ he said of potentially appearing on the BBC series.
‘I don’t jump at celebrity versions of things – they aren’t my bag – but that one I love it so much and being on it would be a real treat.’
Jason is also currently working with Cheez-It on the Comedy Credit Service to boost the mood of Brits after one in ten (11%) admitted they couldn’t remember their last proper laugh.
Asked about the importance of comedy and having a laugh, Jason said there was ‘nothing better’, adding: ‘Giving joy and getting joy is the best thing and this campaign just made sense to me.’
Jason Manford took to the streets of London with Cheez-It to lift the nation’s mood and launch the ‘Comedy Credit Service’ to give Brits a much-needed laugh. Missed Jason? Head to @cheezit_uki on Instagram.
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