Interview: Milton Jones

“It made a difference to my confidence, knowing that someone else thought I was good as well and it was like putting an advert through everyone’s door in comedy,” he says.

Off stage, Jones is a lot less left-field than his comedy persona. He’s quietly spoken, thoughtful and... he laughs. Well, he’s a comedian you might say, of course he laughs, but watch him on stage and he doesn’t laugh at all, merely gazes askance at the audience chortling away, with a rabbit in the headlights look on his face. It was hitting on his neurotic stage identity that propelled Jones, originally a straight actor with a diploma in dramatic art from Middlesex Poly, into the spotlight, and once he hit his comedy stride, his career never looked back.

I’m not sure how this interview will go as Jones’ view of the fourth estate has been expressed as follows: “I don’t trust the press. Sometimes they wear badges that say ‘press’, but if you press those badges they just fall over all surprised.”

Safely at phone’s length away, I’m reassured there will be no pressing or falling over as Jones tells me about finding his way into comedy.

“I tried to be an actor but wasn’t really succeeding, so turned to stand-up because people could see me perform at least, and it wasn’t until I started playing a character and combined the acting and the stand-up, that it began to take off. I began to be able to write for that character and people began to recognise it. The one-liners combined with the hair and the shirts, it’s a kind of alternative branding,” he says.

“There are two types of comic: ones that have the same personality all the time, who do jokes and material without concession as to whether they are onstage or not, and then there are the two dimensional ones who are one person off stage and another on. Having a uniform – the shirts and the hair – the moment the hair goes up and the shirt on, then I’m in it and go out and do the job.”

Jones has evolved the crucial hair techniques over the years from using wax to volumising powder and his shirts are carefully sourced from retro shops. Don’t be fooled into thinking any old loud shirt will do.

“It’s getting harder and harder to find a good shirt,” he says. “It needs to be not too stylised, just a bit off, the ones where you look at it and think ‘is that really nice or really horrible? No, it’s not nice.’ It’s to the side of good taste, but not too far. People send me them but often they’re just too loud or ‘Hawaiian look at me’. So when I’m away on tour I check out the retro shops. I’m going to New York with my son tomorrow for a few days and I’ll do that. I need a new wardrobe of shirts with the tour coming up.”

With the tour and Edinburgh show rapidly approaching, Jones is frantically assembling his props, and will turn himself into a one-man metaphor for broken Britain, before moving on to his more usual stand-up routine.

“I’ve got a giant map of Britain that fits on me with a harness – I’ve had it properly made at great expense and it’s got mountains and green stuff and all the islands, Orkney, Shetland – and there’s a big hole in the middle for my face, somewhere around the Peak District,” he says. “There’s a detachable Scottish head, yes you can imagine where that’s going… and I’ve got Northern Ireland on a stick.

“I’m a befuddled, divided character with my Scottish head thinking of going it alone, while England is pleading and Wales is happy to go along. It’s me messing about with Europe, Brexit, independence, geography jokes; this one is inevitably more political.

“Coming out of Europe I’m wanting to made deals with long-gone countries I used to know, like Ceylon and Rhodesia and Mesopotamia… if there’s an Australian in the audience, I’ll say ‘oh yes, didn’t we used to know you?’”

It’s not the politics and the writing that are giving Jones cause for concern, it’s whether his Britain will break up before he makes it to the end of the festival. Literally.

“It’s big and comes down to my knees, and I’ve got a harness to strap it on so it takes a bit of doing. I was in a tiny theatre last night and it was a nightmare shuffling up the steps onto the stage. It might need running repairs, but I’m hoping it lasts the whole run.”

Jones is looking forward to audience interaction on his tour and reckons he’ll canvass a variety of views across Brexit Britain, with more jokes in his set supporting Remain than Leaving, a reflection of his personal bias.

“For me Brexit wasn’t black and white but I thought it better to Remain, on balance. But my character is that sort of Little English, slightly sort of mixed up upper class, slightly patronising, out of touch type. I hope the audience get the irony.”

As for indyref he’ll be keeping a hold on his head:

“I’m English, so I can see why you might want to go, but it would be a shame for us, and the whole thing might fall apart. Next it will be Devon.”

Whether his Broken Britain prop ends up shredded or the audience has an irony by-pass on Brexit, when it comes to one-liners Jones knows he’s on safer ground with the British appetite for the plain daft. Example. “If you’re being chased by a police dog, try not to go through a tunnel, then onto a little seesaw, then jump through a hoop of fire. They’re trained for that!”

“I suppose the technical description for what I do is short one-liners which are daft, that’s the best word I can think of. It’s the British tradition of nonsense. My style doesn’t really lend itself to putting the world right, only to a peculiar kind of escapism – which might be a message in and of itself.”

Now 53, Milton Hywel Jones was born in Kew near London to a Welsh father and English mother and his family has long been the subject of one liners such as:

“About a month before he died, my grandfather, we covered his back with lard... after that he went downhill very quickly.” Or, “My Aunt Marge has been so ill for so long that we’ve started to call her ‘I can’t believe she’s not better’”

Milton came by his unusual moniker six weeks into his life, during which he had remained nameless, when his parents decided to turn on the radio and use the next name mentioned. “Yes, I could have been The Shipping Forecast or The Archers instead. It was the 1960s so it could have been after Milton Obote, the Ugandan president, or it could have been something about the poet, I’ve no idea, but it’s a good name to have.”

Nowadays he lives in Twickenham near London with his wife and three children, all now students. Contrary to his quip: