Comedian Milton Jones coming to Blackpool’s Grand Theatre for spy-themed stand-up

The 58-year-old comic will perform at the historic Grand Theatre for one night only on October 13.

His show follows a particular theme, telling the grandious story of how he was once an international spy, before taking on a new identity as one of Britain’s biggest-selling comedians.

He said: “Basically, I came up with the title before the show. I thought ‘That sounds good!’, so I made a rod for my own back by theming it. But sometimes it’s easier to write to a theme than have a completely blank page. The show is based on Mission: Impossible, but Mission: Impossible has a huge budget and lots of special effects. My show is just me and some hats and about 250 jokes. It’s low-tech instead of high-tech.

“If you’re going to do a show for over an hour, you can’t just tell bits. That’s what I do on Mock the Week and Live at the Apollo, which is fine, but you want something with the veneer of satisfaction, otherwise it’s too fragmented.

"This show’s got an interrogation scene, a car chase with a swivel chair, and I end up escaping on top of a Vince Cable Car. It’s not strictly realistic, but it’s as daft as ever.”

Milton’s last sell-out tour, Milton Jones Is Out There, was seen by more than 100,000 people in 2017/18, with extra dates added to meet audience demands.

He has co-written and performed in thirteen of his own radio shows for BBC Radio 4, and in 2012 he won the Silver Sony Award for Best Comedy for his programme Another Case of Milton Jones.

He also won the Perrier Best Newcomer Award, and was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and a British Comedy Award.

He said: “Even after all these years, I’ll think I’ve written the best joke ever and it turns out to be one of the worst jokes ever – but what I’ve improvised off the back of it stays in the show. So I would have never got to point B without going through the dreadful point A.

"There are about 250 jokes in the show, but I reckon I end up writing about 350. A lot of them are then used somewhere else – in the next tour, on radio, on Mock the Week – so they’re never wasted. And if they’re particularly brilliant then I might go out of my way to include them in the show.”

He said: “We’ve all been through a lot recently, so why not go through a little bit more? Milton: Impossible is a show about my career as a spy. Some people say that they really love it, others that can’t believe the sheer number of stupid jokes in it, and one old man in Bolton said, ‘It’s just what we need at the moment’. None of them said these things to me directly, but I still own a lot of powerful listening equipment.”

Tickets to Milton: Impossible cost £31 and can be bought on the Grand Theatre website