Interview: One in a milton

Milton Jones, the king of the one-liner and Mock the Week regular, is back. His new tour sees Jones take on the mantle of Indiana Jones, don the hat and set off on a madcap journey into surrealist comedy.

Your new tour is called The Temple of Daft. Why?
Basically, previous tours have been lots of jokes in different forms, but basically lots of jokes. This is more of a story, more like one of my radio shows. It loosely, and I say loosely, follows a kind of adventure-archaeology type story. It started off with me noticing that I had the same surname as Indiana Jones, and it has all transpired from there.

Do you wear a hat? Do you have a whip?
I do wear a hat at one point, not for the whole thing, ‘cause then people would never see my hair.

You talk about using a narrative style, and you say this is a bit of a departure. What brought that on?
Two things. When people see you on telly, they want to come and see the same sort of thing when they see a live show, but obviously not the same jokes. Moving to a narrative was a way of keeping the same style. It begins to mine other areas of jokes as well, in terms of, if you can do a scene where you’re talking between two people – even though I’m the only person there – that’s a different sort of writing than just one-liner after one-liner.

A lot of your comedy is quite word based – can you just come up with it?
No. It’s all about writing as much as you can, and then taking the top 10 per cent. There’s lots of stuff I’ve discarded. The new show will have between 200 and 250 jokes, probably, but that doesn’t mean that’s all I’ve written; I’ve written another 100 that I’ve put in the bin, at least another 100, probably, maybe three times as much, and that’s the hard work. Even after all this time, I’m thinking I have just written the best joke ever, and I go and do it and it just doesn’t work – however, the thing I improvise off the back of it does work. But, I wouldn’t have got to that place had I not tried the first one.

Has being known as the king of the one-liner ever been an encumbrance at all?
Yeah I mean, in a way, I’ve got to be grateful… people want to put you in a box, so that originally it’s people who are booking gigs; they want to know what type of comedian you are to fit on a bill. And I think that’s true of television as well, to some extent. On Mock the Week, I sit in the one-liner chair, and if it’s not me, it’s Stewart Francis or Gary Delaney – you know, it’s the ‘odd’ bloke, so that has gone in my favour. I’m sort of grateful for where it’s got me, but if I go for an audition for another show, albeit a sitcom or something, it’s quite often as the crazy neighbour. You think well, I’m glad I’ve got this audition, but it’d be nice not to have to do that role forever. So, I suppose this show is me trying to move things on.

A lot of your stuff is family friendly, and you’re sometimes called a Christian comedian – do you think that by going against the flow it’s served you rather well?
Yes, although it’s not a conscious effort: I’m not thinking how can I be different to this. I’m just doing what I would find funny myself, hopefully. And I think it is true that I get a very wide demographic, as a result, coming to my tours, because…it’s partly having done Mock The Week and Radio 4, those two ends of the human life scale. And it’s kind of accessible in a way that people feel happy to come as entire families, which is great to look at. It gives a slightly pantomime feel to a tour show because I know that there are grandparents who come with their grandchildren. I like that idea, it feels less niche and I quite often have to explain things, or a child will put their hand up and ask a question during a show, or it’s clear that some grandparents have brought some other grandparents with them.

What does 2015 hold for you, other than a mammoth, mammoth tour?
Yes, well it’s not often I can see a whole year ahead, although the tour goes to the end of November. I’m also doing two weeks in Edinburgh. I’ve got another radio show, it’ll be the 11th series we’ve done for Radio 4, to fit in, we haven’t worked out when we’re going to do that yet. I’ve got other writing projects, so let’s put it that way, that I need to get on and do in my spare time, and there are odd things, you know. What am I doing? Celebrity Squares, in March, and there’ll be more Mock the Week. Then there’s always the next tour to think about.

What’s your hair care secret? How do I get the Milton Jones look?
Well, I did used to use wax, but actually under TV lights that’s not so good – it wilts, because it’s hot, and that’s not good. So now I use something called Backcomb Dust, which is actually far drier and keeps your hair higher for longer.

Sounds like an advert.
It does a bit, doesn’t it? I’m not sure I’m the image the company would want, necessarily, but it’d be nice to get some kind of sponsorship where I get free stuff. I usually say, the higher the hair, the thicker the crowd. Hopefully, on my tour, I won’t have to have it too high.

And finally, we have to ask – where do you get your shirts from?
Usually retro shops around about. It’s tricky with shirts because people think, ‘Oh zany shirt!’ but actually the zaniest of shirts is too much. What I like are shirts that people go, ‘Oh that looks… hang on, is that good or bad?’ It needs to be quite subtle, in a way, and I’ve got 100s of them. But yes, they are usually from Oxfam or retro shops where the old lady says, ‘Oh, that looks just you, that does,’ and they’ve no idea who I am.”

Milton Jones And The Temple Of Daft, Thursday 25 June, Theatre Royal Brighton, £27.90, 0844 871 7615, www.atgtickets.com