Jason Manford crams stand-up comedy tours, TV hosting, acting, musical theatre and being a dad to six children into an incredibly jam-packed life.
But he’s got a great way of keeping on top of it all – he makes sure he enjoys three or four family holidays every year.
The comedian and actor, who has four children with his first wife and two with his second, admits his busy working life – he regularly does stand-up comedy shows and is appearing in a musical at Manchester Opera House in June – means he can’t be there for his kids all the time, but holidays are their very precious family together time.
Here Manford, 44, explains what travelling means to him – and how he’s even putting his nationwide comedy clubs on cruise ships so both audiences and other comedians can get a taste of travel while having a laugh at the same time…
(Alamy Stock Photo)
Is travel a priority for you and your family?
“It’s the fair deal. I’m not going to be there for every school run, for every teatime or to read stories every night, but what we will have is three or four great holidays a year, and make the most of it.”
With kids aged between eight and nearly 17, how do you entertain them all on holiday?
“It can be tough! We’ve never been kids’ club parents – we look for a padel court or go for a walk or go swimming, that’s easy enough.
“But I’m really strict about being on holiday – phones are away, laptops are away, and we play a lot of games – there’s a lot of Uno going on.
“It’s very difficult trying to entertain everybody, but obviously we’re getting to the point now where the older kids are trying to decide whether they come on holiday with you. We’re at that precipice, but it’s fine – you’ve just got to stay consistent and say if you want to come, come, or go and stay at your friend’s for a week.”
How do you find the time for holidays?
“This is my job, so I’ll just find time. The tour’s just finished so I’ve got a couple of weeks off now before the musical kicks in, and then I’ll have the summer off with the kids, and we’ll be off to Menorca, probably for a week somewhere with some friends, and then we do quite a bit here in the UK as well.
“We love our holidays as a family – that’s our time to spend together.”
Where do you like to go on holiday?
“We do Portugal, we do Thailand, we do weekend trips. I love going around Europe – Scandinavia – Oslo and Copenhagen. We drive quite a bit too, so we’ll get there on a ferry and then just drive through Europe and come back through Spain and France.
“My sons like to do a lot of going around different theme parks – we love a theme park. So there was one in Germany we went to recently – it’s our little hobby.
“And then further afield, we’ve been to the west coast of America, Mexico this summer, the Caribbean a couple of years ago, and to New Zealand for two weeks. I did Barbados many years ago, and we went to the Maldives years ago too – that was pretty amazing.
“So yeah, I love travelling.”
What’s on your travel bucket list?
“I’d like to do Australia at some point, maybe mix it with a stand-up comedy tour and I’d like to have a couple of days off and do a gig, another couple of days off and do a gig and do it like that. That’s one of my ambitions.”
You’re bringing comedy to the high seas – what does that involve?
“We run Manford’s Comedy Club all over the country, putting on comedy in different towns and places, and bringing people the best of the British comedy circuit to get them laughing. And then this opportunity came up to do cruises.
“I’ve worked for P&O myself as a comic, and looking at the beautiful theatres they’ve got on these ships, I just thought ‘Hang on a minute, there could be something we could do together here’ – and here we are. Across 35 cruises to France, Spain, Italy and the Norwegian fjords, 70 comedians handpicked by me will perform 140 shows, giving guests the chance to experience top-tier live comedy as part of their holiday.”
Will you be going on any of the cruises yourself?
“Not on this occasion, no. We’re working something out, it might be something we do at the end of the season, or some time in the future – but you’ll soon know, it’ll be advertised everywhere!”
Which comedians will be performing on the cruises?
“They’re Live at the Apollo level, brilliant comics who are going to make everybody proper laugh. Not old-fashioned comics, really brilliant, the sort of comics who’ve supported me at Live at the Apollo and on tour, some that are doing Saturday Night Live and Mock the Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats. It’s that level – the best of the circuit.
“It’s a great way of finding out who’s the next level of comics coming through, who are going to be the ones to know. Comics, we come in generations – in my generation there was Micky Flanagan, John Bishop etc, and now there’s a new generation of comics coming round. As far as the live comedy circuit, they are the best.”
(Alamy Stock Photo)
Was it hard to get comics to agree to perform on a cruise?
“No, it’s not too much of a sell – do you fancy a week on a cruise and you get to do a few gigs as well?
“What’s lovely about these gigs, and I’ve done it myself before, is actually being on the ship with the audience. You get to see them the next day at breakfast, and they come over and say ‘Oh, thanks for last night’, and you almost become part of the network of what’s going on on the ship. It’s a lovely experience for comics to have.
“This is one of those gigs that for us it feels like a real privilege to be involved with – it feels like a reward for how hard we’ve worked.”
Jason Manford is bringing Manford’s Comedy Club to sea for a season of exclusive performances on selected sailings on board P&O Cruises’ Iona and Arvia between May and October 2026, featuring sailings to a variety of popular European destinations. Across the season, 70 comedians will deliver 140 shows in the ships’ Limelight Club.
