Esther Manito is a British-Lebanese comedian who has become a staple of the British scene in the nearly a decade since she bagan her carrer. She is currently touring her new show ‘Slagbomb’ which will feature dates at The Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh and The Stand, Glasgow. We spoke to Esther about the show, the ‘bullshit sandwich years’, and the things she finds funny.

Can you tell us about ‘Slagbomb’?

It’s about the really crap phase of life, which is when your kids are entering their teenage years, and your parents are getting older, so they also need you as well. So it’s those crap sandwich years and how undignified they are. It’s very hard to live up to any kind of expectation of managing a home life looking like you should be on a Jet2 holiday or a trad wife. It’s a bullshit phase.

You’re a month into the tour. How’s it going so far?

Oh, it’s been lovely. It’s been really, really nice. What is so lovely is that I talk about examples in my show of why it’s so crap or dysfunctional, and then you get people coming up to you afterwards, going, ‘Well, obviously I haven’t got that situation, but I’ve got this situation so I could really relate to it.’ Or, ‘My kid didn’t do that, but he did this.’

And also, I talk a bit about the fact that not only is it such a weird period, because not only are your parents needing you more, and my kids are needing me more, but I’m here in the UK, and then I’ve got family in South Lebanon, where it’s obviously really worrying. And so you’re in this situation, and you’ve got to laugh, because it’s so weird; where you’re literally trying to find out what’s going on, and are family okay? And then your kids are just having this massive meltdown because they want Roblox, and you’re just like, ‘What is this world? What is this world like?’ And obviously one shouldn’t understand the other, but you are just stood there in the midst of it all, just going, ‘What a weird, weird juxtaposition!’

We last spoke to you since during the ‘Hell Hath No Fury‘ tour and obviously a lot’s happened in the last two years. Was there it was a conscious decision to make the show about the more personal side of things, rather than the wider global issues?

This is my stance, and it always has been, because people will say, ‘Oh, you’re very softly political’, or, ‘You don’t tend to go out and go, “Here’s what’s going on, and here’s my view.”‘ I don’t need to tell you what my view is. I have my view, and I have my stance, and you have your view, and I don’t feel that people need to be patronised or lectured. I think people deserve a night out.

I think the way that I’ve always enjoyed delivering comedy is to make it personal and to make it observational and to make it anecdotal. That’s how I’ve always enjoyed comedy. It’s how I’d sit and chat to my friends in the pub. You know, I remember when I first started comedy even the word ‘Arab’ was still a very loaded term. People would be like, ‘That’s quite scary word!’ So even just by going out and going, ‘I’ve got this Arab dad and my kids are doing this and blah blah,’ it would normalize it.

I think just by talking about the impact that the situation in the Middle East has had and how it impacts your daily life is a way of reminding people this is still going on, and be a way of also going, this isn’t just something that’s disconnected and over there. This is something that’s impacting, and it’s impacting on a daily basis, and some of us are constantly feeling that guilt. Why should my kids be safe just because of the land I was born on? It’s a way of just kind of bringing it to mind, but also doing it through personal anecdotes and stories.

I have had people that come up to me afterwards: ‘Obviously, I don’t have family in a in a war zone, but I remember when my dad was really ill with cancer, and the kids are just there having a meltdown because of this…’ So it’s just a reminder to everyone that every family, it doesn’t matter where you are, is always going to have that heavy stuff going on. And then you’ve got kids who are just like, ‘Why can’t I..?’ Which, in a way, it kind of makes you think a little bit about what the situation is where families will actually be in war zones, and I’m sure their kids are still there going, ‘But I want this, and I need that…’ which I can’t even begin to get my head around.

Do you need to of dig a bit deeper to find the comedy in that? Or does it come naturally, given the absurdity of the situation?

Yeah. I turned up at a gig in Southend, and I was talking to Jack Skipper. We were doing some new material, and I was saying to him, because we’re both got kids, ‘Oh my god, they don’t care, do they? They really just don’t care.’ Literally, Lebanon’s just now being bombed, and I’m talking to my dad about it, and my daughter’s just behind me; ‘But I can’t find this. Yeah, but I can’t find this. Yeah, but I can’t find this!’ And you’re just like, ‘What?!’ And he was like, ‘You’ve got to put that in the show.’ It just all comes from kind of conversations,

Does the show evolve a lot during its run? Do you constantly tinker, or do you have it sort of more or less locked in place?

I don’t always notice how much I tinker with it. A friend of mine came to watch it in Glasgow, this was with ‘Hell Hath No Fury’, and then he came to watch when I filmed it, which was almost like a year later. And he was like, ‘That’s like a different show!’ And already I’m starting to notice that I’ll just change this little bit, I’ll just change that little bit. And to you, it just feels like it’s a drop of a sentence, or a little cut out of a routine. But by the time you get to the end of the year, you realise how much it has changed.

Like you’ve Chinese whispered your own show.

Chinese whispered myself, yeah. I’ve gaslit myself.

Do you have any sort of pre gig rituals? Are you superstitious about performing?

Yeah, I’m so weird. If I’ve not had a good gig, I really struggle to wear that same outfit again, which is silly, but and other people are like, ‘That’s really mad!’  Also, I have to wear a certain watch. Even when I did Live at the Apollo and it didn’t suit my outfit. My agent was like, ‘You can’t wear that watch!’ So she had to wear it and then take a photo of her wearing it in the audience, just so I knew it was in the room. So I think this is more about me being mentally unwell.

And I always like to shut my eyes before I go on stage. I always sit with my eyes closed so I could go to sleep in an instant just before I go on stage.

A few years back, when we asked you if you’ve got any ambitions you’d like to fulfill, you said you refuse to have them as they stress you out. As your career progresses does this become a more difficult philosophy to stick to?

No, no, I never have any. I wrote a piece in The Independent about New Year’s Day, about how having new year’s resolutions just adds stress. And I think it does. I think it puts pressure on, because I’m quite a negative person anyway, and I think people think it must be quite awful to be negative. But I think there are certain things that are quite cultural. You know, at the end of the day I’ve got a Geordie mum. She was never like, bouncing around the house giving affirmations.

But I think it’s just an easy way to kind of guard and protect a little bit. So I feel like negativity and just being a little bit, ‘Nah, what will be, will be,’ is just an easier way to live. The moment other people start going, ‘This time next year, I want to have X, Y and Z’, I feel my own stress levels going up so I can’t imagine what that would do if that was me.

So if and when you do hit a career highlight, like Live at the Apollo etc, are you just like, ‘Oh, that’s great!’?

Yeah, yeah. ‘That was a really nice high’, yeah.

Like pessimists are the happiest people.

Yeah, I mean, everybody’s like, ‘You are the most negative person’. But then I feel like, because I’m always like, ‘Ah it probably will be doom and gloom. It won’t go my way. I won’t happen,’ I’m not sat there getting really upset about going, ‘I should be on this. I should be doing that.’ So I’m kind of happy in my kind of Eeyore world.

You also co-host podcasts Ghastly Women, and I Didn’t Want it Anyway. Can you tell us about those?

I Didn’t Want it Anyway. we don’t do that any more. That finished because Shappi [Shaparak Khorsandi], she started training to become a psychotherapist, which took up a lot of her time. But Ghastly Women, we just recently won an award for Best Tangent [at the Golden Lobes]. Ghastly Women is an absolute… I struggle to even explain it. It is so surreal and so bizarre. But the people that have followed us and get into it really enjoy it, and we’ve become this kind of weird group who all share the same sense of humor. It’s very, very surreal. Basically, we talk about women who have done ghastly things, but we talk about it in an absolutely ridiculous way, and it’s all very stupid and surreal and crazy and chaotic, but it’s kind of created its own little cult following. And I do really enjoy it, but it is funny when people have obviously tuned in to listen to it, thinking this is going to be a very serious True Crime podcast, and we’re just cackling because we found a woman on the internet who sent fart videos to her boyfriend and was arrested for it. We’re just like, ‘That’s brilliant!’

Is it a different type of comedy than you do on stage as well; a different outlet?

Yeah. It’s really silly, really surreal. And I guess because when there’s two of you, you can kind of just riff off each other.

What do you find funny? And who’s the funniest person that you know?

The funniest person I know is my dad. He’s the person who, literally every day, makes me laugh out loud. I don’t know what it is, but he has these little comments and stuff. He’s just a funny person. He’s just really witty.

And what makes me laugh? I said it to Paul McCaffrey, and I think Paul McCaffrey embodies it a lot, is when there is that kind of English awkwardness. I see it a lot, I find it really funny, in my husband as well. That English kind of awkward, and when they have ridiculous things happen to them, and they just don’t know how to react to it. And I think a lot of Paul’s comedy around that is being kind of dragged along to things, and that awkwardness of, like, ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say?’ And I do find that really funny, that awkward kind of masculinity, that British like awkwardness of not being okay with certain scenarios. And before a gig, I just sit there and Paul’s like, ‘What? What are you laughing at?’ ‘I could just watch you just tinker about.’ Honestly, it’s so funny.

‘Slagbomb‘ is at Monkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh Thu 23 Oct 2025 & The Stand, Glasgow Thu 13 Nov, 2025