MILTON Jones is one of those comedians who has been creeping up on us for some time...

Plenty of people still haven't heard of the 1996 Perrier Award winner, judging by the reaction I got when I mentioned his name, but those who have caught him on Mock the Week or Radio 4 weren't missing a chance to pack the Arts Centre last night.

And from the moment he took to the stage with his spikey, disheveled and disarming persona they weren't disappointed.

Jones is known for puns and one-liners but he doesn't deliver at a machine-gun rate, instead it's often the pause that gets the laugh as the last cog of a joke drops into place... or sometimes gets the laugh when it isn't even delivered.

While his lines are obviously rehearsed to be delivered faultlessly he can still think on his feet and copes easily with a heckler – Josephine. You'd almost have thought it was a set-up, as he had so many quick responses, except that her comments were almost more surreal than his own.

This being a Literature Festival event the audience was treated to a few excerpts from his book, Where Do Comedians Go When They Die?

As this looks behind the mask of the comedian as well as lifting the lid on a few times when shows went badly wrong to blissfully right it was understandably lighter on the laughs.

Followed by a question and answer session it prompted a heckler to shout: "When are you going to be funny again?"

Well, I wouldn't want to give all his jokes away but he did round off with, "I was walking down the street and I saw a dead baby ghost on the ground - but thinking about it, it might have been a handkerchief" and "They say criminals return to the scene of the crime - that's must be why there are so many Australians in London".

And he even got a laugh when Matt Holland, rounding off the evening, had to admit there were no more comedians on the Literature Festival bill this year, but scientists and politicians... "You're not selling it," quipped Jones and shuffled off for a book-signing session.

-Bruno Clements