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GARRY BUSHELL

AS JIMMY JONES jumps off the stage and walks through the audience, the people closest to him squirm like live bait in a bucket. Those who have been before know what to expect and they brace themselves accordingly.

A bashful young blonde is the first to enjoy a personal encounter with the legendary Cockney comedian. ‘Look at your hand shaking,’ Jimmy says. He flashes the rest of us an evil grin and adds, in a voice heavy with suggestion, ‘It seems a shame to waste it…’

He pauses and adds: ‘I’ve got a little treat for you later on, and it won’t melt in your hand.’

A busty brunette behind her tries hard to keep a straight face. ‘Don’t look so serious my dear,’ Jones says with mock concern. Pause, beat. ‘You might have yer dates wrong… Is that your ’usband? Lucky bastard!’

He goes on in a conspiratorial tone. ‘I pulled a bird in ’ere last night,’ he tells the couple. ‘She said, “Give me 12 inches and hurt me.” So I pushed it in six times and punched her in the ear-hole.’

They’re laughing now, but Jones hasn’t finished with her old man. ‘Did she buy you that shirt, mate?’ Jimmy asks. The bloke nods.

‘She must ’kin’ hate you!’

‘What you doing wearing a shirt like that, you scatty bastard?’ The crowd are in hysterics, Jones decides to soften the blow. ‘No, it looks good…’ he assures him, turning to the rest of us and saying in a loud stage whisper: ‘I’d ’kin’ burn it!’

He moves on to a smart blonde in a white halter neck. ‘Where are you from, darling? Talk to Jim. Where? East Grinstead? Oh they’re posh there, they get out of the bath to have a piss, don’t they? Not like us, we piss in the flannel and wring it out. Look at you all in white, you bloody liar! Which one’s your husband? Go on, which one? It’s this one here, isn’t it? Haven’t you got little hands, I bet it don’t half make his dick look big.’

Jones turns to the crowd. ‘Well it’s true! Well it’s no good going out with a bird who has got big hands, she’s got hold of your dick and you’ve got none left. You wanna see your helmet hanging over the end, don’t you?’

Laughter, applause; heads nod in agreement. ‘Have you got any kids, my darling? Yes? How many? Six! Strewth. Must be something in the air down there’ – beat – ‘possibly yer legs.’

I was a teenager in the early ’70s when I first saw Jimmy Jones live in South London. I had never laughed so much in my life. Jones was already a legend in working class circles – they even played his tapes on picket lines. But nothing had prepared me for the full onslaught of his live show. Gag after gag came flying at us. There were one-liners, ‘true stories’, bad taste jokes delivered in cod accents, and plenty of good-natured banter with the crowd – especially the women. The humour was as broad as the Thames is at Greenwich.

On paper now, and seen through today’s narrow PC-tinted spectacles, some of Jim’s material inevitably seems ‘offensive’. But the atmosphere at his pilchard-packed gigs was warmer than the goods that changed hands in most of the backstreet London pubs and clubs he was performing in. Jimmy Jones managed something magical: he created his own comedy universe. He was also the first ever British comic to release adult stand-up on record and later on video.

The world of Jones was similar to the Carry On movies but much bluer. It was a world driven mostly by sex, where lengths were slipped and portions were enthusiastically delivered.

It was filth, but compared to today’s humour, it was almost wholesome. Jones famously didn’t swear at first, instead he had his own catchphrase: ‘Kinnell!’ which he claimed was short for ‘blinking hell – and you can please yer ’kin’ selves if you ’kin’ believe me or you ’kin’ don’t.’

The ‘C’ word never crossed his lips; nor did the ‘W’ word. Masturbation was a ‘five knuckle shuffle’ while a woman’s privates were her Jack and Danny.

‘How are you up the back?’ he’d shout to people sitting at the rear of the venue. ‘Do you like it up the back?’

Some of his jokes were delivered in a broad West Indian accent, which by the late 1980s led him to being condemned as ‘racist’ as well as ‘sexist’ by the usual suspects. Yet I’ve known Jimmy well for more than 25 years, I’ve even holidayed with him, and I know that there’s not a gram of bigotry in him. That’s because Jim wouldn’t have anything to do with the metric system; he only thinks in imperial measures…

Seriously, there’s not an ounce of racism in him. His former manager Neil Warnock, who was married to the black English pop star Linda Lewis, recalls the time they stopped for a beer in the Red Lion in Leytonstone. ‘There were a whole bunch of black Cockney guys playing snooker in there and as soon as they saw Jimmy they started doing his West Indian accent back at him. They loved him. Jim was never prejudiced. As he said, he told jokes about everybody. The only people who didn’t get it were the middle class left-wing media.’

Jimmy’s act has to be judged in its setting which was the popular culture of the 1970s, a time when TV shows like It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and Love Thy Neighbour were both a ratings smash, Bernard Manning was a mainstream star and Till Death Us Do Part was still going strong.

Jones was the first blue comic to break big. His act made him a working class hero to hundreds of thousands of blue collar Londoners. He became an underground legend, as well as a small black market industry churning out his act on vinyl, audio cassettes, Betamax and VHS years ahead of any other comic. The most unexpected people were drawn to his shows. Jimmy attracted rock stars, such as The Rolling Stones, The Nice, the Small Faces, Iron Maiden, Status Quo and the Cockney Rejects. The Beatles played his tapes on their tour bus. His fans ranged from fellow comedians like Dudley Moore to soap stars such as Martine McCutcheon, Peter Dean and Dean Gaffney, via Hollywood legends like Tom Selleck.

When the late great Benny Hill went to see Jim at a nightclub once, he told him: ‘If you see my hand moving under the table I’m only making notes.’

Jones has told jokes to Michael Jackson; he’s entertained the Kray Twins – and their South London rivals the Richardson brothers – and has been booked for private shows by the editor of the country’s biggest-selling daily newspaper. Most surprisingly of all, Jimmy has performed for most of the senior members of the Royal Family, including Prince Philip, Prince Charles and Princess Margaret. His natural audience may have been dockers and dustmen, but Jones went down well with dukes and duchesses too.

Not bad going for a kid from a dirt poor East London background who thought he’d grow up to be a priest.

To this day religion figures strongly in his humour, though Lord alone knows what the good sisters of St Ethelburga’s Catholic School would make of his bishop and nun gag, punch-line: ‘He told me it was Gabriel’s horn and I’ve been blowing it for five years.’

In the late 1980s Jimmy Jones would sell out the Circus Tavern in Purfleet, Essex, for 15 weeks of the year – that’s six, sometimes seven nights a week, playing to 1100 people a night. At the time he was a bigger draw than his ‘apprentice’ Jim Davidson, who was a TV regular – something Jimmy Jones would never be. Jimmy was a victim of his own notoriety. Telly bosses hated him to an irrational degree. Only Arthur Daley’s missus has made fewer small screen appearances.

Although one senior ITV executive did once offer Jim prime time exposure in return for sex with the lovely lady who is now his wife. But Jimmy Jones’s outrageous comedy had made him a millionaire by the time he was 50. He was the first English comic to receive a gold disc for comedy album sales. He has generated DVD, video, album and audio cassette sales worth more than £10m.

‘The bastards won’t let me on TV,’ he shrugs. ‘I dunno why. I personally think that I could brighten up In The Night Garden. I’d give that Upsy Daisy one upsy back…’