FORGET James Bond or Jason Bourne – there’s a new spy in town. And he’s not dressed in a tuxedo or head-to-toe camouflage, but a garish Hawaiian shirt.

That’s right, Milton Jones – Mock the Week’s resident oddball, Radio 4 regular and king of the surreal one-liner – is back on tour, and this time he’s an international man of mystery.

The wild-haired joke-teller might not be the obvious choice for a secret agent, but in Milton: Impossible the comic will be taking his audience through an action-packed story via his exquisitely-crafted pieces of wordplay.

We caught up with the Live at the Apollo star ahead of his UK tour.

"Basically, I came up with the title before the show," he laughs. “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.

"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!

Discussing his Mock the Week fame, he added: "Occasionally, I’ll be channel flicking and I’ll come across myself, as it’s endlessly repeated on Dave. But I watch them from behind a sofa a bit. I’m very grateful to Mock the Week for giving me a wider platform, and also a slightly different audience. It’s a younger audience, and those people will come to a tour show, sometimes even bringing their grandparents or parents. My audiences are a motley selection of people, which I quite like, actually."

Milton is at 02 Guildhall Southampton tonight.

Tickets are on sale now from academymusicgroup.com or 023 8063 2601.