Milton Jones interview

Milton Jones has just announced a bunch more dates for his Temple of Daft tour. The one-liner comic is embarking on uncharted territory with his new show - he's now 'a joke machine with a purpose'. The tour sees him stringing his quips together in to a broader story, one in which he takes on the mantle of Indiana Jones and sets off on a madcap journey into surrealist comedy.

In this interview Milton talks about big hair, bad shirts, Mock The Week and his new direction...

Hi Milton. Why is your new tour called The Temple Of Daft?

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.

You wear the iconic hat too?

I do wear a hat at one point, not for the whole thing, because then people would never see my hair!

Having a narrative arc is a bit of a departure from your previous shows. 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.

How did you prepare for a tour?

I'm amassing jokes from the moment my last tour beings, and then once it finishes, I begin to go to little out-of-the-way places to test them. Generally speaking, the further you travel, the more pleased they are to see you.

I will go with bits of paper and ideas, and it will be throwing mud against a wall and seeing what sticks. Eventually I'll accrue enough material to do try-outs nearer home. So, it's a trial-and-error process from the beginning of that.

You've got a very busy schedule. Is it difficult to keep up with that?

Well, it is difficult, and there are some weeks, or some months, where you're away from home quite a lot, and maybe it's the winter and maybe you're up north and it's quite grim all round... But it's actually harder to write a tour, creatively, you know... that's where the brain ache is. Once you've got a show that's up and running, it's more a physical battle.

I try and see as many people around the country as I can, friends and relatives. Because there's nothing worse than talking to hundreds of people, and then being the last person out of the car park, go to a hotel, and then the next time you talk to someone properly is when you talk to hundreds of people the next night. That's a recipe for madness!

What do you do to re-energise?

Me and some other comedians get together and play football. We like it because we see each other, but also it's one way of turning your head off, to become completely involved in something else.

Isn't that football match full of people trying to outwit each other?

Well, to be fair, there are about five different running commentaries.

What is your process for creating jokes to put into the show?

It's all about writing as much as you can, and then taking the top 10%. 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...

Do you have notebooks of jokes that you might return to one day then?

'Never throw anything away' is my motto, in that if you thought there was a seed of something that was funny, keep it on file. Especially one-liners because one syllable, one word, changing the picture in people's heads, can suddenly make something work that didn't before.

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. [Initially] 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.

How do you prepare for Mock The Week?

It's a bit like doing an exam in that we actually get some stuff beforehand, but the list is so long that basically it's every story that happened in the news that didn't involve someone dying over the last week. So, there is no way I can cover all of it. You just hope, like an exam, that the bit you've revised comes up, because it records for nearly three hours for a half hour show... You hope that the 10 minutes you zoned out for isn't the 10 minutes that appears on television!

When I know I've got Mock The Week in the diary, I think, 'oh, it'll be nice to see those people again', but it is hard work, there's no escaping that, especially after you've done quite a few.

The programme used to have a reputation for being very competitive. Is that still the case nowadays?

I've known lots of those guys for years and we all get on and it's fine. But the way it's set up, it's always seven people trying to get through a door for two. I can't tell you how many times I've had a joke that would have fitted, and I just couldn't get a word in. But I suppose from an outsider's point of view, that is where the dramatic tension is, because you've got all these people trying to get a word in. It kind of makes for absorbing television.

A lot of your stuff is family friendly, and you're sometimes labelled 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 else does 2015 hold for you, other than your mammoth tour?

Yes, well it's not often I can see a whole year ahead, but 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. What else 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...

Before we finish, we have to ask - What's your hair care secret? How do we get the 'Milton Jones look'?

Well, I did use 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 a good advert for them...

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, 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 tours the UK with 'Temple of Daft' until 29th November 2015. To find out more about Milton and book tickets visit www.miltonjones.com