jason manford
The second edition of the tenth, yes, tenth, series of Live at the Apollo was hosted by Jason Manford, who is about as safe a pair of hands as you can get on TV. And I mean that in a good way. Some comedians are good live but don't seem able to make the smoothest of trnaditions to the small screen. Manford makes comedy on TV look like a doddle.
King of improvisational comedy Ross Noble will make his musical theatre debut in the 2015 UK Tour of The Producers.
Noble joins the cast of The Producers from Monday 18 May as pigeon-loving Franz Liebkind, brought on board by Max Bialystok and Leo Bloom (Jason Manford) to help them in their plot to put on the worst musical of all time.
It’s been interesting to see the way that comedians from the live circuit have recently dipped their toes into mainstream TV waters. Sara Pascoe, Joe Wilkinson and Joe Lycett are among the acts to have succumbed to the lure of the revived Celebrity Squares and then there is that ITV1 attempt at reanimating an even older corpse, Sunday Night at the Palladium.
A lively week for comedy, kicking off with a major benefit at the Eventim Apollo tonight. Stand Up Against Austerity has been put together by Francesca Martinez and campaigning group The Peoples Assembly and is pretty much a who's who of comedians with a conscience, old socialist stalwarts and rising stars.
A lot of comedy to get through this week so I’ll cut to the chase. From Monday night Marcus Brigstocke brings his latest show, Je M’Accuse to the Soho Theatre. Brigstocke is usually passionately political onstage, but this is his “and this is me” moment, in which he gets personal, discussing his time as a podium dancer, oil rig worker and over-eater.
Jason Manford has done a little bit of acting in the past. He appeared in the C4 series Shameless and funnily he appears alongside Shameless star David Threlfall in Not Like That, Like This, ITV1's forthcoming drama about Tommy Cooper. Not that you would recognise Threlfall, who is totally convincing as the lumbering comedy magician. And you might take a moment to recognise Manford, who sports heavy spectacles, kipper tie, braces and cardigan as trick-devising magician Ken Brooke.
Comedian Jason Manford is setting up a website for well-run gigs, to help comedians get the right kind of bookings and, more importantly, to encourage comedy fans to enjoy live comedy and keep supporting live comedy. He has registered the name findalaugh.com and anyone interested can go there now and join a mailing list to keep up with developments.
At the risk of digging an even deeper hole for myself I'll try to respond below to Dave Twentyman's response to my original piece here.
Jason Manford has been writing on Facebook about how two high profile critics – Veronica Lee and Julian Hall* – have quoted his jokes in their reviews of his recent Hammersmith Apollo show.
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