Comic Esther Manito on navigating those tricky "sandwich" years - Crawley date
Award-winning British-Lebanese comedian Esther Manito takes a nosedive into the challenges and hilarities of the awkward sandwich years as her tour Slagbomb moves towards its final dates.
On Friday, February 27 she will be at The Hawth in Crawley.
“The sandwich years are quite new territory representing those years when your kids are still quite dependent on you but your parents are getting older and they are depending on you more and more now. It is quite a new thing for my generation because we've got kids that are all very dependent on technology as well as parents that are relying a lot more on the support of their children because of the crumbling NHS. There is not the same level of doctors' visits and we are doing a lot more ferrying around, and our parents are living in an age where everything is online, paying bills and everything.
“And I think really our generation is feeling the squeeze. It's quite a common thing really. We are all juggling with the Instagram image of a mum who is on top of everything and ‘Here are my top ten tips!’ The fact is it's actually knackering and frustrating and really hard. My children are ten and 12 and when you're working as well that's difficult, and you've also got the cost of living going up all the time.
“Really the show is just about recognition of what's going on, stories that I hope people will recognise and that people will laugh at and stories that I hope will make people feel better about what's happening in their own lives – especially when you’ve got kids and you know that everything you do will embarrass them!
“We were brought up with such self-loathing in the 90s. It was all lose weight and be a good girl and be amenable but now I've got a daughter who's been raised on mindfulness and body positivity and being more open about gender. And these are all words that I have never heard before. I am mothering somebody who is at the same time teaching me about the world!”
As for Slagbomb, the title of the tour, as Esther explains, it’s “a drink that I discovered when I was on a camping holiday and had a desperate need for alcohol. It was a bit of a dive bar and I just saw that it said Slagbomb was being served there. I had to have one and it was completely disgusting. But I just felt it was a good title for the tour.
“I'm from Essex and I love the word slag. It is such a gentle ribbing word in the way that we use it. I've grown up with it, not thinking that it's a bad word at all. We just use it in such a lovely gentle jokey context, and for me it has never been something that has been harsh.”
Esther has appeared on Live At The Apollo (BBC), The Stand Up Sketch Show (ITV) and Hypothetical (Dave). She has been heard on The News Quiz (BBC Radio 4), The 13 million Club (BBC Radio 4), Mark Watson Talks a Bit About Life (BBC Radio 4), Russel Kane’s Evil Genius (BBC Sounds), Breaking the News (BBC Radio Scotland) and co-hosting Newsjack Unplugged (BBC Radio 4 Extra). She is also the co-host of Ghastly Women podcast alongside Lily Phillips and I Didn’t Want it Anyway with Shappi Khorsandi.