Comedy

Review: Jason Manford @ Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Manford brings his work and process to an upturned cow.

Find tickets here

Housed inside a giant upside-down cow in the heart of Edinburgh’s George Square, Jason Manford is introducing his Muddle Class with a very special in-progress show.

Adjacent to his show notes, which he cleverly updates as the hour progresses, he runs through a plethora of new material, ranging from his experiences with a particularly confident Glaswegian during a speed awareness course to the everyday trials and tribulations of being a father of five. “I’ve never had an audience member with more than five kids,” he smiles, before launching into a series of observational anecdotes that any parent, or former child, can identify with.

Manford jumps around topics, all housed under the Muddle Class umbrella. It’s the result of his self-proclaimed working class upbringing mixing with his more middle-class associations, not least jumping between London and Manchester to interact with his family.

He jokes about his schoolyard interactions; his battle between his common courtesy and his Mancunian fire. It’s a well struck balance that’s on display through his show, delivered with a healthy dose of enthusiasm and cynicism.

And it’s funny. Very funny. Manford has been a staple of the circuit for some time now, and it’s easy to see why. Grabbing laughs out of the unpolished material, even at this stage it’s some of the most thought out comedy Edinburgh has to offer. Come his mammoth tour in September, things are set to get even better.

Grab tickets for Jason Manford’s Muddle Class tour, and remaining tickets for his work-in-progress at Edinburgh Fringe, now through Ticketmaster.co.uk.