The Very World of Milton Jones is a British radio series starring "Britain's funniest Milton", Milton Jones. Each show begins with Milton's life flashing before his eyes due to a near-death experience; his guardian angel comes down to visit him, and together they discuss his life. At the end, the angel leaves him, but by some staggering coincidence - usually relating to something mentioned earlier in the episode - he survives.
Milton Jones has done some other series as well. Another Case of Milton Jones featured Milton's life in various jobs, including chessmaster (featuring the Russian university town of Untergrad), architect and mayor of London ("I discovered there was a secret network of tunnels under the city. Why hadn't I been told of this earlier?"). The House Of Milton Jones was a slightly more conventional Dom Com. And on occasion he pops up as a comic elsewhere.
Not to be confused with the other Milton.
Tropes:
- Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?
- Artistic License – Medicine: If you consider homeopathy to be medicine, at any rate. One episode involves Prince Charles plotting to cure all the world's illnesses by putting a drop of an extremely potent medicine into the ocean, thus (by the laws of homeopathy) making it infinitely diluted and infinitely powerful. In fact, 'real' homeopathic solutions are diluted by considerably more than 'one drop in all the water on Earth'.
- Brick Joke: Many, usually forming the resolution of the progamme.
- Catchphrase: "Bother!"
- Anton's Mad Libs Catchphrase, used Once an Episode in Another Case..., is "No, I can never X again. You see..."
- Comically Missing the Point: "I'm the most famous undercover journalist in the world! I could walk into any drug den or illegal betting syndicate and everyone would know who I am!"
- The Comically Serious : Anton, who is usually a genuine expert in whatever Milton's career is this week.
- Don't Explain the Joke: Milton's Bizarro Universe counterpart Milton Smith explains his 'jokes' all the time. And yet the women still love him.
- Expository Theme Tune: The House Of Milton Jones has one, which describes all the characters and also clarifies that it's not actually his house, it's Auntie Dilys's.
- Forgotten Birthday: In Another Case Of Milton Jones, Milton makes a throwaway mention of the entire nation of Britain pretending to forget the Queen's official birthday. Despite this, a later episode shows that they forget his birthday every year.
- Hurricane of Puns: The entire show.
- Hypocritical Humor:Milton (to a New Zealander): Yeah, you go away, with your weird accent and your land full of sheep. Not like us Welsh.
- I Coulda Been a Contender!: In Another Case, it always turns out that Anton was a high-flyer in whatever field Milton was involved in, but had to abandon his dreams due to some unfortunate mishap (the anecdotes where he explains this mishaps are always introduced by a piece of melancholy harp music, and the audience are beginning to catch on to this)
- Imagine Spot: One of the purposes of the guardian angel is to show Milton what life would be like under some strange circumstance. For example, one episode has Milton pondering what it would be like to be a Jehovah's Witness in the Middle Ages.
- My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: Once an Episode in The Very World..., and in fact the whole of the episode.
- Negative Continuity: Each episode gives Milton new parents, a new job, a new previous love interest and new circumstances. Of course, this is all because of the Rule of Funny (see below).
- On the Money: In "Jockey", Milton's father's donkey sanctuary will be shut down if he doesn't find £137 million. This is coincidentally exactly the amount Milton won in a race before.Milton: And it is also the cost of a white chocolate horse I saw in the window at Harrods. But don't worry, I know where my priorities lie.Truck: Chocolate horse for Mr. Jones!
- Pocket Protector: The "Mexico" episode ends with Milton surviving death by firing squid when the bullets bounce off his Tesco Clubcard.
- Pretentious Pronunciation: Sir Alan 'Mill-AY' Millet in the "Explorer" episode of Another Case. Milton mocks this for the rest of the episode: "...and then the Bay of Biscay - sorry, Biscuit...
- Product Placement: Parodied. Milton's father (or, at least, one of them) was a donkey ride operator on Blackpool Beach.Milton: I think I was closest to Cillit Bang Stain Remover Removes Stubborn Stains. I used to call him Cillit Bang Stain Remover for short, and every day we marched up and down the sands with "Cillit Bang" printed proudly on his side.Mrs Truly-Barrington: So you had sponsorship?Milton: Sponsorship? Bother!
- Rule of Funny: Why else would Milton have an evil genetic engineer brother who creates a set of giant vegetables that Milton manages to destroy other than to set up the line "Your evil flan has failed!"?
- Not to mention the Bank of England's gold reserves being in the shape of a giant pound coin, to set up the pound dropping through the floor and someone being hit by the falling pound.
- Running Gag: Not across the episodes, but within them. For example, the Mexico episode involves many instances of Milton failing to emulate the famous Zorro symbol ("That's not a Z, that's an N." "Yes. For I...am Norro! As the path to freedom is not wide; it is Norro!").
- Shout-Out: To various Radio Four bedfellows, including The Archers and Desert Island Discs.
- Sound-to-Screen Adaptation: Milton Jones's House of Rooms on Channel 4, based loosely on The House of Milton Jones.
- Take That!: Against, among others, Wandsworth and Liverpool, The Police, Phys Ed teachers, and the Welsh rugby team.
- In an episode where Milton is a journalist, Jeremy Clarkson gets invited onto Milton's "hard-hitting" TV show.
Milton: Welcome to the show, Jeremy.Jeremy: Thank you so much![Sounds of somebody getting hit]Milton: Well, I think we all feel a lot better now. - Troubled Backstory Flashback
- Waxing Lyrical: A common joke, as well as using snippets from songs as dialogue. For example, one episode has Milton interviewing Sam Cooke for a job as a teacher; all of Cooke's responses are lines from "Wonderful World (Don't Know Much About History)".Milton: How about teaching PE?Cooke: But I do know one and one is twoMilton: Ah, overqualified then.
