Milton Jones: ‘I will have an idea in my head for 10 years’

Milton Jones has one of those faces that just looks funny – like he was born to do stand-up comedy.

I mentioned this to the friendly comic, who is 60 (yes, really!), when he spoke to the Cambridge Independent from his office in West London.

“Well, that’s sort of good,” he says, “in that it took me ages to work out that you’ve got to have some funny things to say, but you’ve also got to create a world where people want to laugh.

“And that’s as much to do with the attitude you come on with, the look, as the words you’re saying.

“People say you’ve got to discover your voice but I think it’s your whole persona… you’ve got to draw people into a world, and they’ve got about 10 seconds before they judge your world, so it needs to be fairly instantaneous.

“And it wasn’t until I stuck my hair up and put on a silly shirt that it acted as a signpost to say that I was coming from left field.”

The comedian and TV favourite – his numerous television appearances include Mock the Week, Live at the Apollo and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow – is to bring his new tour HA!MILTON to the Cambridge Corn Exchange in October.

Known for his impressive one-liners, expect to also hear some musical numbers this time around, which should be entertaining as Milton – who in my view would probably vie with Gary Delaney and Stewart Francis for the title of ‘King of Puns’ – describes himself as “tone deaf” and notes that he has “no sense of rhythm”.

When we spoke, the star had been preparing for the tour by going around “lots of little theatres” trying out material.

“You know what one-liners are like, the difference between putting the emphasis on one particular syllable makes it work and not doing it means it doesn’t work,” explains Milton, a fan of classic sitcoms such as Blackadder, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Cheers, Roseanne and Frasier.

“So you have to try things out in a lot of different ways, and finding also after 15 minutes of one-liners you need to have other things, like music and pictures – so I’ve been working on that as well.”

Milton says he enjoys doing these smaller, work-in-progress gigs.

“The pressure’s off in one sense, people pay less for a show that has bits of paper,” he laughs.

“And I’m trying stuff out, so if stuff works then that’s great. If it doesn’t work, it’s just for that one night only and never again, although I never throw anything away, to be fair.

“Sometimes I’ve got an idea on the go for 10 years or more, and eventually I make it work.”

He continues: “Normally I have an idea of what worked and what didn’t in my head immediately afterwards and I make a few notes – and even to this day, jokes that don’t work are like being hit over the head with a plant.

“You remember the pain of it not working, so that’s what keeps it fresh in your memory, as to what you’re going to do and what you’re not going to do again.”

Away from the live arena, Milton is working on his 15th series for Radio 4, and also performs regularly on Sorry I Haven’t a Clue (also on Radio 4), appearing on its last UK tour.

He is also the author of Where Do Comedians Go When They Die?: Journeys of a Stand-up, along with 10 Second Sermons and Even more Concise 10 Second Sermons.

A Perrier Best Newcomer winner at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, Milton has won two Sony Awards and received a British Comedy Award nomination.

Does he still enjoy his job as much as he ever has? “Yeah, probably in a different way,” he replies. “I enjoy people knowing who I am, in the sense of I don’t spend 10 minutes winning them over in the first place.

“They tend to have come to a show because they like what they’ve seen somewhere else, on TV or radio, so that I like…

“I find it quite difficult to do completely new stuff, in that you want to keep within the brand of what you’re doing – if that’s the right word – because people are coming to you for that.

“But on the other hand, as a performer and an artist (if that’s not too grand a word), you want to stretch yourself and do other things.

“So that’s an opportunity in the tour show to sort of try doing other bits and pieces that you haven’t done before.

“I even get a director to come in and suggest movement and things that I might not have thought of, because stand-ups tend to do what they’re good at.”

On the subject of HA!MILTON, Milton says that the show, which is clearly a reference to the popular musical Hamilton, is “the story of my relationship with music – and I am completely tone deaf”.

He elaborates: “So it’s a musical by someone who’s completely unmusical, so I’ll be taking the clichés of musicals but actually turning it into stand-up, rather than music.

“It starts off with me singing my first song ever at a Nativity play when I was five years old. I’m ‘Angel A’, or as the other children called me, ‘Angela’, and I forget all my words, but fortunately I have a crib sheet in the manger…”

Milton, an admirer of fellow stand-ups Bill Bailey, Harry Hill and Ross Noble, notes that there will be some “topical jokes” in the show, as well as some “artificial intelligence, in the form of an overhead projector”.

“All sorts of things because people don’t really want more than 15 minutes of one-liners at a time,” he reiterates. “You’ve got to vary the angle of attack, with pictures and props and nonsense, so lots of different things.”

Milton Jones will be bringing HA!MILTON to the Cambridge Corn Exchange on Thursday, 31 October. Tickets, priced £35.50, are available from cornex.co.uk. For more on Milton, go to miltonjones.co.uk.