Milton Jones

Milton Jones: Walk the line for comedy

With regular appearances on Mock The Week, surreal funnyman Milton Jones is becoming a more familiar face. So how much of what we see is a stage persona and how much is the real Milton?

Gigglebox weekly #33 - Milton Jones's House of Rooms

Having seen this pilot, I can sum up my reaction to it with one word: brilliant. This is possibly the best TV pilot I've seen, so much so I was laughing all the way through.

Review: Milton Jones's House of Rooms

More than any other Comedy Showcase sitcom this year, I'd most like to see House Of Rooms become a full-blown series.

There's a surreal edge to Milton Jones's one-liners and wordplay and, in this sitcom pilot, things get odder still. He's a wide-eyed befuddled sort who lives with his mum in a house full of tenants, including an overconfident Aussie making eyes at the super-timid love of Jones' life. Whether it'll make a full series is anyone's guess; if co-writer Jones employs the quips and sight gags that serve his stand-up career so well, it's got a fighting chance.

Having proved his mettle on shows like Mock the Week, Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow and Lee Mack's All Star Cast, the charmingly eccentric stand-up comic Milton Jones turns his hand to sitcom tonight with this one-off pilot episode. Sadly no preview discs were available, but the set-up looks promising, with Jones starring as a gaffe-prone man who lives with his mother and a handful of lodgers in a battered old house. If past form is anything to go by, viewers can expect a good deal of surreal humour and some brilliant non-sequiturs.

He of the wild, staring eyes, Milton Jones has until now been the preserve of the stand-up and panel-show circuits, but here he appears on our tellies as a 21st-century Rigsby. Milton and his mother live together, renting out some of their spare rooms to various peculiar tenants. But the equally peculiar landlord is entranced by Alice, a girl of few words to whom he cannot quite succeed in conveying his passions. When competition turns up, in the shape of new tenant Paul, Milton is forced to up his game.

Milton Jones interview

Milton Jones talks about House Of Rooms, the testosterone packed Mock the Week, and more...

Mock The Week's Andy Parsons takes on hosting duties tonight.

Don't worry about the first two or three minutes, when you might think he's having a bit of an off-day - he's on fire for the rest of his set, covering everything from the war in Afghanistan to how to deal with cats who use your garden as a toilet (before people call the RSPCA on me, while I find his idea funny, I wouldn't actually use it myself!).

His first act is the brilliant Andrew Lawrence, the self-confessed scary-faced comic who has been popping up on various panel shows this year.

I first saw Andrew a few years ago at a comedy club when he was a relative newbie to the circuit, and he was so funny he stole the show from the other, more experienced comics.

So it's lovely seeing him get this prime time platform (and, in my view, steal the show again, which is really going some considering his stage mates). Completing the comedy line-up is king of the one-liners Milton Jones... he of the messy hair, vacant stare and psychedelic shirt.

Combined, the three comedians give you a reason to stay in. Although with BBC iPlayer and its clones, not to mention magic set-top boxes that record entire series at the touch of a button, who revolves their lives around watching TV these days?

Oh yeah... that's right, I do. Doh!

The acts may be hit and miss but stand-up comedy is still enough of a draw to keep the ratings up for the seventh series of this comedy showcase recorded at London's Hammersmith Apollo. Tonight's host Andy Parsons, the bald-domed star of Mock the Week, will be joined by Andrew Lawrence for a large helping of innocuous observational comedy, while panel show regular Milton Jones will offer up a portion of silly, but entertaining one-liners.

Milton Jones: Taking Christ Out of Christmas

If you're an atheist, why not go out and look up at the night sky towards all those tiny jewels of light twinkling from thousands of light years away and think to yourself "that's all a bit of luck then." I'm a Christian and I'm winding you up of course. But perhaps there is something we agree on - taking the 'Christ' out of Christmas for instance.