Milton Jones, the king of the one-liner and Mock the Week regular, is back with his new tour, The Temple of Daft. Embarking on unchartered territory, joke machine Milton, the man who can cram in up to 250 gags a night, is now a joke machine with a purpose. His new tour strings the quips together into a broader story, one that sees Jones take on the mantle of Indiana Jones, don the hat and set off on a madcap journey into surrealist comedy.

Your new tour is called The Temple of Daft. Why?

Basically, previous tours have been lots of jokes in different forms, but basically lots of jokes. This is more of a story, more like one of my radio shows. It loosely, and I say loosely, follows a kind of adventure-archaeology type story. It started off with me noticing that I had the same surname as Indiana Jones, and it has all transpired from there.

Do you wear a hat and have a whip?

I do wear a hat at one point, not for the whole thing, ‘cause then people would never see my hair.

You talk about using a narrative style, which is a bit of a departure. What brought that on?

When people see you on telly, they want the same sort of thing when they see a live show, but obviously not the same jokes. Moving to a narrative was a way of keeping the same style. It begins to mine other areas of jokes as well, in terms of, if you can do a scene where you’re talking between two people – even though I’m the only person there – that’s a different sort of writing than just one-liner after one-liner.

Has being known as the king of the one-liner ever been an encumbrance at all?

Yeah, I mean, in a way, I’ve got to be grateful... people want to put you in a box. Originally it’s the people who are booking gigs, they want to know what type of comedian you are to fit on a bill. And I think that’s true of television as well, to some extent. On Mock the Week, I sit in the one-liner chair, and if it’s not me, it’s Stewart Francis or Gary Delaney – you know, it’s the ‘odd’ bloke, so that has gone in my favour.

What’s your hair care secret?

Well, I did use to use wax, but actually under TV lights that’s not so good – it wilts. So now I use something called Backcomb Dust, which keeps your hair higher for longer. I usually say, the higher the hair, the thicker the crowd. Hopefully, on my tour, I won’t have to have it too high.

Where do you get your shirts from?

They are usually from Oxfam or retro shops where the old lady says, ‘Oh, that looks just you, that does,’ and they’ve no idea who I am.