Another Case Of Milton Jones

The 20 funniest radio comedies of all time

Before Radio 1's first run of new shows kicks off next month, here we count down the 20 greatest scripted radio comedies ever to hit the airwaves

Radio 4 axes Milton Jones radio show

Radio 4 has axed Another Case Of Milton Jones after five series. A Radio 4 spokesman said: 'In this instance we decided not to re-commission a sixth series of Another Case Of Milton Jones but we are always very interested in hearing about new ideas involving Milton.'

Milton Jones: Interview

The former Perrier winner chats about cracking jokes in church, why he's fallen out of love with Edinburgh and what happened when he came face-to-face with Jeremy Clarkson...

Another Case of Milton Jones is entirely unnecessary. It's silly and never shies away from gags so predictable that you can feel them amassing on the horizon long before you can see them.

There were a lot of vision jokes in yesterday's programme, with Jones admitting that he hadn't been able to join the RAF because of poor eyesight. "I accidentally joined the RAC," he explained. He tried to find an airbase, using a sign in a shop window. Only later did he realise he was never going to find RAF Fletickets. He had fun, too, with names of opticians, mentioning a James Bond-themed chain: For Four Eyes Only.

If you're feeling grumpy, as I was when it started, it's easy to resist the show's charms and to tire of the hapless buffoon Jones. But then it catches you unawares with its rampant, innocent tomfoolery. "Milton, did you remember the flight recorder?" a pilot asked Jones. "Yes," he replied. There then came the sound of a recorder, badly played.

In another moment, Jones revealed that a 17th-century ancestor "invented the cold air balloon, but it never really took off." I also liked when he name-dropped Office Dibble to a woman in an American airbase. "I think you're confusing Top Gun with Top Cat," she told him.

Milton Jones: Interview

With mad scientist hair and a healthy appetite for ridiculous jumpers, Milton Jones looks every part the comic on stage.

For this particular instalment, Jones found himself casing the catwalk as a professional photographer at a Milan fashion shoot. Despite being pretty lousy at the job - his only relevant experience was taking pictures of animals - he still ended up jetting off to South America to snap an eccentric and often angry Miss Venezuela.

To attempt to explain what happened next would be far too ambitious, let's just say that Jones' adventure featured encounters with Big Foot and a tribe of eco terrorists, and that was after he discovered what going for a Brazilian really meant.

The joy of the programme was in the writing, particularly the running gags, and the way it was performed by Jones and the cast, which included Tom Goodman-Hill, Dan Tetsell, Ingrid Oliver and Ben Willbond.

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.

When Another Case of Milton Jones got under way, it seemed like here was another Radio 4 comedy which would be vaguely amusing but nothing more. How pleasing was the result as the world renowned barrister became embroiled in a historical case centred around the origins of the tapestry. Try to imagine Indiana Jones meets Jeeves and Wooster (Milton has the trusty Anton) with a surprise helping of Wind in the Willows thrown in. What a difference Jones and James Cary's story, however silly, made to the proceedings, together with a fine cast and some good old-fashioned one-liners and wordplay.