AS Jason Manford prepared to stage his final Southampton performances in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang he told the Daily Echo about his 'eventful' time in the city.

From his stay in a ' haunted house' to an impromptu gig in an ambulance and sharing digs and diets with comedian Phill Jupitas, there was never a dull moment!

Despite his busy schedule I met Jason when he popped in to The Stage Door cabaret club at Guildhall Square where he set up his monthly comedy club a year ago. Here he not only took time to meet youngsters rehearsing with The Stage Door Youth Theatre but he did a Q and A session with them about Chitty and his comedy career.

He admitted that Chitty - his third professional musical, was his " hardest yet" and said "every part of me hurts" as he made a call to his physio to try and organise treatment on his aching ankles.

He'd been at the Stage Door until 3am " dancing, singing and eating pizza" after organising a party for cast and crew the night before even though he got called in to rehearse with another pair of child actors at 9 o clock that morning. He could not have been more amenable though.

He was loving playing Caractacus Potts who is so very different to his last comedic role of Leo Bloom in The Producers which was at the Mayflower last year.

"'Yes, this part is so different. I always feel I should be funny but then I think my character doesn't have to be that. My character is the heart and the centre of the show. To have had sell out performances with standing room only is fantastic.

I don't think there have been any surprises but Me Ol Bamboo is still the biggest challenge which I put the most work into so when they applaud I really enjoy it. "

Jason had been sharing digs with fellow comedian Phill Jupitus who was doing all the cooking. And the pair of them have been on a real healthy eating campaign resulting in them losing a combined total of around five stone!

" I've got a very tough act in the show and Phill's is very physical too. So we said we could both lose a few pounds in this show and we just noticed we were losing weight! I've lost about one and a half stone since rehearsals started on January 5 so it's been good. It's like doing an hour at the gym every day. What you see on stage is only part of it. Just getting from stage left to stage right is at full pelt and even things like lifting two nine year olds into the car and squatting down to talk to them is very physical, and you can't really use their heads can you to balance and get back up again! "

It would be easy to live on take away food and eat badly given their unsociable working hours but thanks to a slow cooker and good planning Phill was working wonders in the kitchen.

"Phill does all the cooking! I've got my lunch packed in a thermos flask that he made and he's cooking something in the slow cooker for later. He's absolutely fantastic and we have a laugh together. His kids left home recently and now I think I've become his surrogate child! I brought my play station with me. I'd not used it for two years and I brought it as a DVD player but the other night I thought I will have a game! And he said to me turn it off and come and have your dinner!

We eat late after the show. Usually when I'm on my own I eat pizza and curry and McDonald's take always!

He's lost four stone in the last couple of years. I lost two stone doing The Producers and then put it back on again and I've lost it again.

I don't get obsessed with losing weight. It it happens it happens but with blokes if you create an element of competition that's what triggers a blokes brain! "

There had been some ghostly goings on too. Jason spent a couple of days with his family in an old house over half term courtesy of Airbnb - but they became convinced it was haunted!

He posted two picture on Facebook of the house and garden . One shows some odd spooky looking mist that some say resembles a ghostly figure, and another one shows a child's head at a window.

On his Facebook page he says he shrugged it off as " weather and a kid's hair toy thing".

But he then adds: " Then my 13 -month -old daughter wakes up and starts waving, smiling, laughing and talking to someone in the corner!!"

Jason laughs it off now and explained: " We rented out a house in Crawley for five nights over half- term and went to Paultons Park and Pepper Pig World and also to Marwell Zoo. On the night my mum and daughters arrived they were texting me saying the house was cold and creepy. My mum's an Irish Catholic so she thinks everything is haunted. I said I would be there soon and once I got there I lit the fire and everyone was indoors and it was lovely and cosy. It was foggy outside and mum took a picture and caught a picture of the ' ghost !'

I think it was just the fog because there's no such thing as ghosts! "

It was a bit different to last year when Jason was here over half- term and the family stayed at Butlins in Bognor, which he also says " was great fun."

Luckily he enjoys life on the road and says: " I enjoy being on tour and being in different places. I can do six to eight months in my house and then I get stir crazy. It's what I've been doing for 17 years."

He did enjoy performing for all five of his children when they joined in the fun at a special relaxed performance of Chitty.

"I've got five children aged one to six and I could hear my one year old shouting 'Daddy!'" he grinned.

Then there was the time Jason almost brought the show to a stand-still at one performance when he lost control of Chitty!

"I crashed the car into the scenery - it was my fault ; my spacial awareness isn't too good! I nearly took out half the ensemble !"

And he will probably never forget his impromptu " smallest ever gig" that he performed in an ambulance outside The Mayflower after discovering a lady had fallen and broken her arm after leaving his show.

She even managed to laugh as he told a few jokes but Jason says " it was probably the laughing gas!"

All the cast and crew of Chitty, meanwhile, will not forget how Jason organised a party for them at the Stage Door - for most it was their first night off since December 5.

" It was great. It was one of those ironic things. I was tweeting asking people where we could go for a night out in Southampton and it didn't occur to me to use the venue that has my own name attached! We were dancing, singing and eating pizza."

Now Jason will continue with the show to Dublin and Belfast until the end of April . He will then re- join it in September with hopes of it eventually going into the West End.

At the moment he is also writing his next stand-up tour and revealed:

"I would love to write my own musical. That's my next venture; I'd like to originate something, do something from scratch, even if it's a version of a film."

Manford's Comedy Club is thriving too with clubs across the UK. Southampton is switching it's monthly comedy night from Sundays to Fridays. The next one is on February 26.

Jason is pleased with the Southampton venture:

"The comedy club has been great. The thing with comedy is the hardest thing is getting people in through the door . We look after the venues and quality of the acts and we've had 100 per cent 'happiness': acts love it here and so do the audiences. The thing with anything like this is the audience take ownership of it and it kind of becomes the audience' s club.

We've had big names like Michael McIntyre and John Bishop and myself perform at the clubs and next month John Bishop will be at another of the clubs doing some warm up gigs for his tour. Our aim is to go to other big names and ask them to do warm ups and we will offer these nights as a thank you to those that support us all the time. I will probably do a gig here in the summer.

My first love is still stand up. There's something raw and magical about it. You are in charge. There is no director and no OfCom and you fall on your sword. There is something pure about it. With stand up it is about hiding the craft and all the skills you have learnt over the years so it looks like you are just a guy having a chat, where as with musicals all the craft is on show."