Another Case Of Milton Jones

I have a soft spot for Milton Jones. His show is so silly, so warm and daft. Like Count Arthur Strong, Radio 4's best comedy series, Another Case of Milton Jones is miles from the clever-clever satire that Radio 4 is known for. It is its own surreal world, one through which Milton bumbles, spouting groan-aloud puns, irritating all around him while trying to do his best.

He's immensely quotable, chucking out one-liners like bread for the birds: a high-speed Jimmy Carr without the cruelty. 'I've heard great things about your spring collection,' he said last week (he was being a fashion photographer). 'When exactly did you start collecting springs?' Yes, I know - awful - but a funny image. The lines come so thick and fast that you crumble eventually. Actually, you find yourself trying to predict the punch line. Easy enough if the set-up is: 'After the show, I went for an Italian...' ('Well, he was just annoying me, sitting there looking so stylish.')

But only a strange and brilliant comic mind could come up with: 'It's difficult to know if you remember something or you remember the photograph of something. One of my earliest memories is of being in America, standing over an air vent and my skirt billowing right up.'

Another Case of Milton Jones makes the studio audience whoop with delight. Jones is, as Radio 4's trailers so often tell us, a Perrier Award-winning comedian.

He does not swear. He is not rude. He is a word play man, more Dandy than Punch. He has adventures, as in very old radio comedy shows like ITMA with Tommy Handley or Up the Pole with Jewell and Warris.

Last night he was a photographer. Every time he mentioned a lens, a lens case or a lens cap up would pop Len, who'd say: I've been looking for that. There are running gags, as with Len, or a repeated line, Give me that sexy look, perhaps undo a few buttons on your blouse... and an unexpected voice, that of a man or the Queen, will reply.

He was snapping a calendar, of unusual sights. An Italian driving carefully, that's January... A laughing German, that's November.

Maybe you have to be there to roar with mirth. Or maybe someone is pumping laughing gas into that studio.

There are those who hate the relentlessly childish, pun-driven comedic style of Milton Jones. But open your mind - or, if you wish, take it out and place it on the table - and the bloke has something going for him. You are practically guaranteed to laugh rather more than once, however hard you try not to, as in this latest four-part series Jones imagines himself as a star photographer, a barrister, an explorer and a jockey in a series of hopelessly puerile adventures. And when you've done, consider this - what does the Jones style of comedy most remind you of? That's right - the Goons.