A gaudy 1970s time warp, Batley Frontier is perhaps the best venue for Bernard Manning, who has been appearing here since 1975. The electronic message board reads: "Anyone seen putting cigs out on the carpet will be asked to leave, and made to pay again to get back in."
Then again, nothing is quite as surreal as the vulgar bête noire of British comedy. As the compere reminds us, at 73, "young Bernard" is enjoying a revival courtesy of the Entertainers TV series. Those who suggest a growing Manning rehabilitation could argue that nothing in his act is quite as distasteful as the weekly sight of Bernard in his Y-fronts. But they might struggle to win the argument. Here Manning pours disgrace on Liverpool, Yorkshire, the audience and, as expected, black people. Manning has been telling racist jokes all his career and simply cannot understand why, as a Jewish comic who tells vicious, vile jokes about Jews, he can't tell them about the Chinese or gays as well as the French, dogs or bishops. Everything is a target. But he is far more complex than a bigot. Notably, he expresses sympathy for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
But that stuff is a fraction of Manning's act: he is blistering on the royals and bodily functions. He remains the master of the lacerating insult. His microphone technique is awesome; all budding comics should watch him.
Even now, his act is brilliantly complex. Central to Manning's comedy lie working-class nihilism, a subversive relish of notoriety and a deep-rooted fear of change. The monologue about his health is mind-boggling. (Manning is diabetic, has angina and, after a stroke, is deaf in one ear.) He is educative on 1930s poverty, moral on sex and drugs, and moving on the subject of bereavement, which makes the old racist "gags" seem even more aged.
There are those who believe, with some justification, that Manning lances the boil of racism by bringing prejudice into the open. But sending up racism with laughable stereotyping can become indistinguishable from pandering to it. The closing banter of "Goodnight, keep your friends white" is not only factually incorrect - he is pals with the black comic Charlie Williams - but also not remotely funny. The rehabilitation is presumably on hold.
