Get ready for a volley of one-line gags when Milton Jones comes to town this week
‘A month before he died, we covered my grandfather’s back with lard. After that he went downhill very quickly.’
IT’S one-liners such as this that have established Milton Jones as one of the UK’s premier pun-based comedians.
The joyously eccentric comic – among the most instantly recognisable in the business thanks to his frizzy hair and taste-free Hawaiian shirts – has spent the last few months touring his new stage show across the country, and this week sees him return to Jersey for two nights at the Opera House.
‘I last performed in Jersey a couple of years ago,’ says Milton, on the phone from his London home.
”I remember it as being quite a civilised place, very well-heeled. It was sort of like the past, but the past in a good way.’
The Temple of Daft, Milton’s latest show, is something of a departure from his previous live shows in that it has an actual storyline (loosely inspired, as the title suggests, by the Indiana Jones films).
‘Previously, my shows have just been lists of jokes,’ he says, ‘but this time the jokes are within the context of a narrative.
‘There’s a bit of a story, which means I’ve got to do the jokes in the right order.’
The Temple of Daft is, admits Milton, not unlike an extended episode of his plot-based Radio 4 series Thanks a Lot Milton Jones!
‘It is like one of my radio shows in that there’s a definite beginning, middle and an end,’ he says. ‘It all ties together nicely.’
The reasons behind the change in format are to maintain the audience’s interest and also, he admits, to keep himself on his toes.
‘When people have seen you on TV and then they come to see you live, they want to hear, if not the same jokes, then certainly the same sort of thing.
But artistically you feel you have to move on, otherwise you’re just going round in circles.
So hopefully adding a story changes things a little, although there’s still plenty of my trademark word play.’
So does he follow a similar pun-writing procedure to his friend and fellow punster Tim Vine, who claims to write a minimum of 15 new jokes each day?
‘I don’t have a quota as such, but I do spend my mornings trying to think of things –that is usually my creative time,’ he says.
‘What I also do is book myself into ”new material nights” in London, where comics can go along and do five or ten minutes for free, just to try out new material.
‘If, when I’m writing in the morning, I know I’ll be facing a room full of people all sitting looking at me blankly in the evening, it gives an extra edge to what I’m writing.’
Milton readily admits to a certain amount of trial and error when performing new material: ‘You’d think after doing it this long I’d be getting better at it, and I suppose I am a bit, but I still surprise myself sometimes.
‘I’ll perform something and it won’t work, but then I’ll improvise something off the back of it and that will work.
‘I’d never have got to the successful part had I not first done the other stuff.
‘It’s all a case of being a moving object and creating stuff and seeing what happens.’
One-liners are definitely in fashion, with Milton, Tim Vine and Canadian comic Stewart Francis all regularly performing to sell-out audiences.
But does the sheer quantity of pun-based performers on the comedy circuit make creating all-new jokes increasingly tricky?
- Years ago I used to supply filofaxes for the Mafia. Yes, I was involved in very organised crime.
- My grandfather cant do what he used to, bless him. You know, bomb the Japanese.
- The pollen count. Thats a difficult job.
- Dont go camping in the countryside. Have you noticed how, whenever the police find a body, its always in a tent.
- My other grandfather, he would never, ever throw anything away. He died in the war holding onto a hand grenade.
‘I certainly lose my like for a joke if I feel someone else has done it, or has done something similar,’ he says.
”Quite often, I’ll phone Tim or Stewart or whoever I think might be responsible and ask, have you got something like this?’
Milton remains perhaps best known for his regular appearances on TV panel show Mock the Week, on which his eccentric air and smut-free gags offer a refreshing contrast to the blokey humour of his fellow contestants.
‘I’ve been on Mock the Week for about five years now,’ he says, ‘but I’ve been doing comedy for over 20 years, with radio shows and so on.
‘It’s only in the last five years that I’ve really come into most people’s perceptions.’
He admits that part of his new-found fame lies in the recognition factor of his aforementioned nutty-professor-on-holiday appearance: ‘I’m the bloke with the hair and the shirts, yes.
‘The hair came about because I needed to find a way of shutting people up when I walked on stage, so it’s handy that it hasn’t fallen out yet.’
And the shirts? Well, I actually wore jumpers to begin with but I’d get too hot under the lights in the TV studios so I changed to shirts.’
Milton is equally unorthodox in his beliefs, being one of the few openly religious comedians on the circuit.
This is particularly notable at a time when, as he says, it is almost a rite of passage that comedians should be openly and staunchly atheist.
‘I feel there’s almost a bit of backlash against that now,’ he says. ‘If you have a faith or if you’re an atheist, we’re all on the same journey, so why not respect other people’s beliefs?
‘I’m a comedian who is Christian, rather than a Christian comedian, and I am happy to speak up when necessary, but I don’t want to become the go-to guy for Newsnight whenever there’s a blasphemy case.’
He is, he maintains, reluctant to work any faith-based material into his comedy: ‘I always find that when, say, the Simpsons gets preachy about a specific cause, it instantly becomes less funny, or when EastEnders does something about Aids – we can see what you’re doing, you’ve stopped being entertaining.
‘The same applies to performers who have faith: if you suddenly start trying to convert people, it isn’t going work.’
It would seem that no one needs converting to the joys of Milton’s new show, however, with The Temple of Daft having garnered five-star reviews from fans and critics alike.
‘I won’t be specifically changing the show for Jersey audiences, but I will do a bit of local research,’ he says. ‘You always want to avoid saying the wrong thing.
‘I was on stage in Blackburn recently and said, “Good evening, Stockport!”.
‘Sometimes you go places and you can only say pardon about three times to an accent you don’t understand.’
