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Nominated for the best headliner award in the Chortle Awards 2009 and 2010 – winning it in 2011

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Milton's Paradise Jones at the Brighton Comedy Festival
Live Review
Brighton Dome

Milton Jones is one show in which I can abandon my reviewers’ notebook and pen. Not just because it can be a barrier to simply sitting back and enjoying the top-drawer material, but what on earth can I write? He did an daft joke that seems silly, but is actually highly inventive. Then another. Then another. Then another.

For that’s all you get with this gifted one-line merchant. In Milton’s Paradise Jones, he’s tried to dress it up a bit for the sake of theatre, but it’s really just daft gags all the way.

Talking of dressing up, that’s how he starts. In cloth cap and reflective waistcoat (it’s for a joke, obviously), he appears as his grandfather – one of many, given that ‘my other grandfather…’ has become something of an unlikely catchphrase.

Not that it’s much of a character, just a way of delivering some typically leftfield punchlines in a slightly wobblier timbre, and an excuse to wheel on a tartan shopping trolley that contains some of Jones’s props.

Yes, prop comedy. In this day and age. But in these capable hands, a box of detergent becomes a beautiful visual pun with not a hint of the desperation that once did for the whole genre. That’s how good he is.

The ‘character’ is soon discarded, and Jones, in vivid orange floral shirt, continues to yomp through the wonderfully deranged gags. Many involve wordplay, of course, but they also play with ideas, the subtle twisting of meanings and intent ensuring these are rarely mere puns. As evidence, the beginning of his flipchart-based routine gets laughs without words at all.

Another set piece involves a phoney slide show of his supposed round-the-world trip, which imposes a structure of sorts on all the airport and geography jokes Jones has in his sizeable repertoire.

To add a touch of fluidity to the otherwise rigid gag-gag-gag pattern, Jones isn’t afraid to banter with the audience, either, using some of the standard ‘what’s your name/job?’ questions to springboard into gags. Yet he also sets up running jokes with ome punters to add an air of spontaneity to the night. The Brighton audience prove remarkably frisky, but he parries their spirited backchat with verve – which isn’t always the strong suit of master joke craftsmen like him. Precision-engineered one-liners and audience rapport is a rare, but deadly, combination.

A small handful of the more easily memorised jokes will no doubt be cracked around watercoolers the morning after any Milton Jones gig; but there are far more wonderful gags here than you could ever hope to remember, so just relax and admire the dedicated workmanship that’s gone into them.

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The man with MANY Gradfathers! Very funny guy, cannot wait to go see him again.

shabby, May 2012

Predictable one liners and really old corny jokes that a kid could make up! Don't understand all these people who like him! If you like proper comedy and not a performance by a 10 year old saying knock knock jokes, stay clear!

Izzy, December 2011

Fun without filth. Very clever. Laughed 'til we cried.

J & L Shawe, September 2011

Witnessed the surreal,puerile, absurd,infantile -call it what you like! humour of Milton Jones at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness. Delivered in a deadpan expression! reminiscent and worthy of any silent movie star, and I loved every minute of this silly pun laden gig. It's incredible how Milton has weaved all these puns together like some English equivalent of the Green Giant of corn or should I say puns! A retentive mind that entertained his audience with ludicrous anecdotes drawn in like - "moths to a flame" with his humour. The reaction of the audience said it all.

Douglas Thomson, June 2011

Am I missing something? I saw Milton Jones last night at Queens Hall Edinburgh and really couldn't get into the corny puns that pass as his humour.

Mel Winters, March 2011

I would rather be fisted by Joe Calzagie than sit through one more painful minute of clearly scripted puns. no orgininality, just cheap puns a five year old could have made. It sapped my will to live.

Philip Schlee, January 2011

My wife and I saw Milton Jones on Friday July 2 at the George IV Chiswick and we both loved him. It was funny line after funny line. We are now both big fans. He is the Prince of Puns. Go see him; you’ll not be disappointed.

Graeme & Eva Parker, July 2010

it's so predictable and dull and the radio shows are f'ing terrible. shit shit shit.

so terrible it\'s painful, June 2010

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