Milton Jones interview

British Comedy Guide chats to Milton Jones, the surreal one-liner comic...

Hi Milton. Thanks for talking to us. You've been a Radio 4 star for quite a while, but would it be fair to say that the last couple of years have seen you reach out to a much wider audience?

Telly is like putting a leaflet through everyone's door and saying 'this is my face and this is what I do'. So, yeah, the last couple of years have gone well, and shows like Mock The Week have given me a chance to perform to a slightly different audience.

The joke is that Mock The Week is how students find out about the news. It's certainly opened up a whole demographic for me that I was only playing to occasionally previously.

How do you remember all your gags?

Well, sometimes I don't. I've got a rolodex in my head, and when a subject comes up I'll run through that and if I've got something on the subject I'll throw it in. The nice thing about one-liners is that if you find a small gap you can get in, chuck a grenade, and get out again relatively quickly. A lot of comics are very good but they take a minute or two to work up to what they want to say, where as my gags are a bit more instant.

People tend to remember short stuff better, I've found. The downside of that is that if I'm putting together an hour-and-a-half show then that is a lot of 10 seconds to sew together... but short gags are quite handy for those panel show game things.

Watching Mock The Week, we've noticed the other comedians really appreciate you gags. They tend to laugh more openly than they do at other comics' material.

Don't be fooled by that, it can be just the way the edit comes out. I've seen myself on TV laughing at things that I defintiely didn't laugh at in live recordings.

It turns out people like jokes though, and certainly in terms of the touring and things people like to be able to remember short things. Probably so they can tell them themselves later, but also because it hits home better.

Talking of appreciating gags... we've heard that you've been testing out your jokes on cows?

Yeah, a couple of weeks ago I made some videos for Laughing Cow in a field. It was one of the most bizarre days of my life. The idea was to see whether they appreciated comedy and, according to the expert on the video, they did to some degree. It was pretty odd because I've played to some animals in my time, but never quite that colour and shape before!

As we can see from the video, you're well known for your interesting jumpers and shirts. Where do you get them from?

All kinds of different places. There are a lot of nice retro shops in Covent Garden and most cities have a retro shop or two. People have also started to send me shirts they think I'd like, and some people have turned up at shows with offerings. It needs to be just the right kind of shirt though: not 'wacky wacky', more 'mmm' at first then 'oh, no'. I like jumpers and shirts you think it could be nice but when you get up close, you change your mind and decide 'no, that's not nice'.

Ha ha. As you mentioned earlier, a full-length live show involves a lot of gags - how do you manage the longer stage appearances you do?

I think after about fifteen minutes most people would have blood coming out of their ears if you just did one-liners at them, so what I try and do is vary it with bits of music, props and interaction with the audience - anything to vary the angle of 'attack'. At the moment I'm using an overhead projector, and doing some jokes via that - it's still one-liners but they're working in reverse, starting with a picture.

Your gag-packed Radio 4 sitcom Another Case Of Milton Jones is hugely popular, and long may it continue. Any thoughts of bringing it to TV too though?

Yeah, I think the present format wouldn't work. In fact, we tried to make it work several years ago but the problem was, for example, if you've got a sketch that says 'I'm in England, then I'm going to Africa, and now I'm going to the moon' you're probably not going to get the budget to do all that. So we had to change it, and then they said, 'oh, this isn't like the radio show' so it was a bit of a catch-22 in that respect.

I'm currently working with people on a couple of new telly ideas, and there are thoughts about animation and looking at different ways of doing surreal stuff. It's not straight forward though - it sounds like it should be easy on television but it's not because, somehow, spelling everything out visually loses some of the cleverness. I think there's something to be said for the verbal type of humour - the natural home of it is on the radio, even though that has a smaller audience.

Fair point Milton. So apart from the above, what else is in your diary?

I'm working on a pilot for Channel 4 sitcom which I've written with Dan Evans, and we record that in August and September (more info), then I'm back on the road again from October till Christmas... so for the first time in a long-time I can see quite a long way ahead. Plenty to do and not quite enough hours in the day at the moment!

Wow, all very exciting then. All the best with all those projects Milton, and on behalf of the cows, thanks for bringing some laughter to dairy fields too...

To see more clips of Milton entertaining in the field check out The Laughing Cow on Facebook

To book tickets to see Milton live this October to December visit www.miltonjones.com