WHY I’D NEVER GET A PROPER JOB
Comedian Milton Jones on being funny, fearless and pretty much unemployable
government and authority and just not punching down, whether it be minorities or children.
‘I am against soft targets and sometimes you can get laughs by making fun of celebrities’ children but that’s not what we are here to do. I prefer people who use imagination more rather than just make jokes about one particular person. I find jokes about people tricky.
‘I think it’s okay to attack people for what they do in terms of politics and so on but the idea is not to attack them for things they can’t do anything about.
‘That’s the theory of it anyway,’ Milton laughs. ‘Sometimes you just get stuck though, especially on the likes of Mock the Week.
‘I’ve often made a joke about something and wished I hadn’t said it afterwards because the show moves so fast.’
Making people laugh for a living is a skill most of us would love to have. So what does Milton find funny?
‘Sometimes you see something and you think “that’s not my cup of tea” but you see that it’s good so that makes a difference,’ he says. ‘I tend not to like anything that’s relentlessly dark and I tend to like jokes as you might imagine rather than anything too high concept. I also like acts who are nothing like me at all.
‘The trouble with doing this as a job is more often than not you’re standing at the back, stroking your chin and thinking, ‘I see what they did there’ rather than laughing out loud.’
IN fact, he says, the worst thing a comedian can hear at his gig is the sound of another comedian laughing — and with good reason too. ‘What happens is comics laugh most when other comics go wrong,’ Milton explains. ‘So if I did something wrong in the show and hear people laughing, it will be the comedians at the back.
They laugh in completely different places than the rest of the audience. But that’s just the way it is. We’re all going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time at some point.’
These days, Milton can’t really see himself doing anything other than comedy, although that’s not quite how his career started out, it seems.
‘I was training to be an actor years ago but no one really wanted me to be one so I wasn’t really working that much. With stand up, it’s very pro-active — you’re not waiting for someone to phone you, you get up and do your thing and then you book yourself in somewhere else.
‘It was easier to get yourself started and I just got lucky. Gradually it began to take off and I can’t do anything else now. I’m fairly unemployable in terms of getting a proper job.’
But if there was ever a chance to get into acting of some kind, Milton says he would still be interested in elements of it.
‘I would like to try comedy acting in a sitcom or something like that,’ he says.
‘But getting known for doing one thing or looking a certain way, it’s hard. If ever I get an audition, it always seems to be for the crazy neighbour next door or something that seems to suit what people have seen me do before.’
Which in itself is strange — because there’s far more than one dimension to this very talented and clever comic.
MILTON Jones: Out There is on Wednesday, April 18, at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway, followed on April 19 in the Lime Tree Theatre, Limerick, Cork Opera House on April 20, Ulster Hall Belfast on April 21 and Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on April 22.
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