Interviews · 13 June 2014
Milton Jones Building shows, and bombing
Milton Jones interviewed by Kevin Durham, 13 June 2014. 5m 40s on tape.
In this Milton Jones interview he talks about how he creates shows and bombing at gigs. If you liked this Milton Jones interview then please leave us a comment in the comment box below. Milton Jones Is Frustrated With Atheist Comedians Milton Jones "Mock The Week Is Like An Exam" Milton Jones "Not swearing & being a safe comedian" Disclaimer: Some of these links go to one of my websites and some are affiliate links where I'll earn a small commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you.
What's on the tape
A transcript, made by machine from the audio and tidied up. It gets names and the odd word wrong, so treat it as a way to find the bit you want rather than as a quotation. Every timestamp jumps to that moment in the video.
0:01 tours? I know that you were saying before that you start completely from fresh. How do you look for like a subject to work around looking at words, ideas, pictures and thinking what's the worst that could happen in that situation? always turning things upside down and obviously most of it leads to nothing. Yeah. Occasionally then I go ah ah I make a note and I put myself into a new material night get all those notes try and turn them into oneliners. Maybe I do 25 jokes five work another five might work it with a bit more work. Does someone like you ever bomb anymore? Uh you still bomb?
0:44 What? I mean like completely you do like a five 10-minute gig and there's just silence. Awkward silence. I think your definition of death changes as you get more experienced. Uh-huh. But I know sometimes in the next 6 months it'll be a really difficult gig. Probably could be a corporate thing or where they haven't the microphone doesn't work or you know something really basic. And I think that's part of being a standup is to learn to live with that just knowing that at some point you'll be in the wrong place at the wrong time and that's how it is. First gig, good or bad? Did you die or did you do well? First open spot died horribly. Died horribly. How long was it until you kind of years? Two years. So you kept dying for two years? No, no, no. I didn't do another gig for
1:28 two years after that one. Yeah. You were that put off. Yeah. Yeah. Um and then it went well. Well, and then it was okay. And you I think what you mustn't do is just book one gig in at a time cuz then you're always measuring yourself about how that gig went. You book 10 in. Then you can take a sort of average across But yeah, tiny little gigs also are at the mercy of the loud laughers. You can never, you know, friends in the audience or whatever it is. You think you've been doing really well and then you face a real crowd and oh so um yeah know it took a long time to get going. It takes a long time to find your own voice. And so from from that point that gig the way you died and you had that 2-year break, how
2:11 long was it then that you um how long after that did you win the period? I became best newcomer five years after that. Five years after that. Yeah. So, it took a while. Yeah. Very good. It's the way it is. And do you get annoyed when you see some comedians who just kind of get a hang of it really naturally and really quickly. Some of some of them just kind of it almost it's almost like they start and they just they're just good. They're just naturally good. I've been around long enough to know that it goes in cycle. Some people start really quickly. Yeah. They get to 20 minutes and they may not change for 10 years from that point. I mean literally words they may be the same.
Read the rest of the transcript4 more
2:57 Um and other people that's more like myself start slower and gradually gradually ramp up. I'd say it's hard for kids or people in their 20ies because they haven't had the life experience. And we all started by doing an impression of a comedian rather than actually being a comedian. What was yours? Well, no, not not even like an impression of someone who existed. Yeah. But like you do you're almost like a teenager at a party pretending to be bigger than you are. Yeah. And you're a bit like some other people around at the time. Um which is used is like a plant growing up a stick. You know the stick is the established comedian.
3:41 you and eventually hopefully you go off. I've got the greasy my hands on. Um eventually you go off and do your own thing but you sort of begin on the template of someone else. Yeah. So when you were writing did you find that you were writing someone else's voice? Were you writing in the voices of of when I started I was writing in a hundred different voices? That was a problem. It wasn't until I developed the idea of the hair and the jumpers as it was. And did did your sets become a lot easier after that? I'm guessing because people established you very quickly as the weird guy left field. Yeah. Yeah. It acted as a signpost to where I was coming from. Yeah. So that was handy. Gave me another 10 seconds at the top of the show while people were look at this
4:24 and uh they expected me to say odd stuff from that point on. So that worked really well. Whereas before sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes the jokes weren't consistent. Yeah. And people would say, "You've got good jokes, but I don't know what I'm booking." It's a bloke with good jokes. So, you know, I'm guess that that must have really had you stand out from the crowd back then cuz I can't imagine too many people kind of doing that kind of thing. Wine shirt, big hair. Yeah. Yeah. And that that was handy. I mean, I had to play around with the level of it in terms of how stupid actually was it. Oh, really? Was there a point where you were too stupid? Yeah. I think the hair went too high. Do you have a ruler and measure it?
5:09 10 cm. Just no. That's not good. Got bad reaction. Five. I usually say the thicker the crowd, the higher the hair has to go because they needs to be cartoon for them. But uh I think sometimes I went a bit too far in terms of um just being too stupid and then then there didn't make sense because the jokes were quite clever. Yeah. So, it's a fine line, but if someone comes to see me do a radio show or record it, I don't even bother with the hair. Just they know what they're in for.
