Chris Eldon Lee writes about his friend and Three Men In A Bowtie comedy colleague Martin Jones who has died at the age of 74.
Martin always made an entrance. He’d leap on stage in full evening dress and muddy green wellies, punching the air, bouncing around full of joy, like a Heifer let out into fresh pastures, to an upbeat rendition of ‘The Archers Theme’. Then John Moore, at the piano, and I would gently remind him that he was a farmer. “Oh, yes, I forgot,” he’d say, instantly deflated. “I’d come on again”. John would then strike up ‘The Death March’ and Martin would solemnly shuffle back on, looking downtrodden and haggard, as befits a depressed farmer.
Exaggeratedly morose, he’d announce himself. “My name’s Martin Jones. I’ve got a small holding. Especially after a frosty night.” And there’d be the subtlest adjustment of his trousers … and the audience would be in absolute hysterics.
Martin had this God-given knack of being funny. Like Tommy Cooper, he’d just have to stand there to make people laugh. It looked effortless. But he worked hard at his humour.
He was a diligent Shropshire dairy farmer by day, caring deeply about his cows. But at night he was a crazy clown, taking an audience in his giant hands and wringing every laugh out of them.
“He writes his deeply poetic songs and monologues round the back end of his cows”, ran the Bowtie blurb. “It’s the steam that makes him come over all misty-eyed and romantic”.
The farm really did give him his comedy material. The daily grind of fighting back tsunamis of slurry inspired his signature song, set to Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Send In The Clowns’.
“Isn’t it thick
Here on the yard
Although now it’s quite runny
The sun soon bakes it hard
It’s all from the cows,
A big herd of cows,
In the spring of the year.
When I scrape it up
And it’s nearly all gone,
They lift up their tails
And we’re back to square one….”
Manure was a recurring theme in Martin’s repertoire. Toilet humour is so much funnier when it isn’t about humans. But he capitalised on how cow muck affected him. He was a master of the doleful monologue.
“I realised it far too late,
I was already hooked,
I’d become addicted over night
To shovelling piles of muck.
I’d muck out all my cowsheds
And cart it out the door,
And when there wasn’t any left
I’d hang around and wait for more.
My poor cows couldn’t keep up you see
My addiction grew and grew,
So, I crept out with my barrow at night
And mucked out my neighbour’s cowsheds too.”
Martin joined Shropshire’s fabled comedy act almost at the outset, in 1996. We did exactly 500 gigs together. They were largely in village halls in Shropshire, Cheshire, Hereford and Worcester and Wales. We played in marquees, cow sheds and, occasionally, places of entertainment.
Performing one night at Theatr Clwyd in Mold, Martin forgot he had his phone in his pocket. Halfway through a joke, it rang. He answered it and immediately swung into his one-sided phone call routine; an art-form pioneered by the American stand-up comic, Bob Newhart. Martin apologised to the audience, explaining it was a call from the gormless lad he’d left looking after the farm. He had a cow calving … and he’d never done it before. He proceeded to talk the lad – and the audience – through it.
“Lift up it’s tail. Can you see a hole underneath? Put your hand in the hole. Hello? Hello? No, not the hand holding your mobile phone… ”
Having been to Harper Adams Agricultural College himself, he welcomed students onto his farm; partly because they gave him so much new material; real or imaginary. Martin’s imagination was as fertile as his land. His best loved song was about a hapless work experience boy called ‘Derek Lovell’, sent to do the milking. It was set to The Kinks classic hit ‘Lola’.
“He got mixed up with the cow and the bull
He saw something hanging down, so he gave it a pull…”
When we did the Edinburgh Fringe in 2003 that song seemed to spread around The Festival. Audiences arrived, already knowing it.
The controversial anatomist Gunther Von Hagens was in Edinburgh that year with his autopsy show. Martin couldn’t resist lampooning him, stepping on stage with a plastic apron, an appalling German accent and a cuddly toy cow … which he proceeded to try to dissect. The spongy cow, of course, wouldn’t keep still, and every time Martin approached it with his knife, it would look him in the eye.
Dolly, the genetically cloned sheep, was in the news around then too, providing Martin with the opportunity to dress up as a country and western showbiz sheep … and sing a song borrowed from Tammy Wynette.
“You think it’s hard to be a woman,
It’s twice as hard when you’re a lamb.
Oh gosh, oh golly,
My name is Dolly,
Excuse me if I’m bleating,
But my genes just keep repeating….
When I ask, ‘where are my parents?’
They pull the wool over my eyes,
Oh! I’m so lonely,
Why did they clone me?
Variety’s the spice of life
But for me, it’s just the twice.
Stand By Your Ram
You’ll find more in-ter-est
If you avoid the test tube when you can
Oh…Stand By Your ram.
Martin was a deep-seated Leonard Cohen fan. So, he acquired a guitar. He couldn’t play it. He couldn’t even tune it. But, if you are only going strum one string, you don’t need to. The dirge that emerged was a plaintive one called ‘Pig With No Poke’, about a pig … with no poke. The poor boar clearly wasn’t up for breeding.
“So, I tried him with my best sow Bessie,
As I quietly puffed on my pipe.
But the boar turned around and said to me,
‘I think that she looks more your type…”
In January 1999 the audience at Wem Sports And Social Club (there were over 150 packed into a tiny room) were surprised by the presence of TV cameras. Martin had agreed to feature in a BBC 2 documentary about the state of farming in the wake of BSE. He reckoned it was fitting for him to do it, as his farm was usually ‘in a state’. But it was supposed to be a secret, so we explained to the audience the cameras were from ‘Crimewatch UK’. The BBC crew fell about.
Fortunately, Martin kept his act clean that night. His naughtiest song – and I mean REALLY naughty – was penned much later. ‘Miss Marigold’ was about his love affair with a yellow rubber glove. By this time, Nonny James was with us, and she wrote a delicate, innocent little tune to accompany Martin’s very dodgy lyrics.
‘When I’m down she lifts my head
She’s always there to lend a helping hand.’
Nonny braved it out at the piano whilst I hid backstage and waited for the complaints. They never came. Martin’s twinkling eyes and cheeky smile meant he could get away with it … every time. He loved getting as near to the knuckle as he could. One of my favourite condolence notes since his death is from a fan who, years later, still giggles whenever he does the washing up.
When Sally took over from Nonny in 2010 it was the age on techno-pop. Martin bought a cheap Yamaha keyboard. He couldn’t play that either. But he did get a driving disco beat out of it, and various animal noises … to which he wrote a rap called ‘Robot Milker’. Sally had to plug it in for him and then retire to a safe distance. He rapped about a malevolent automatic miking machine which couldn’t tell the difference between an udder and the farm cat. In the audience one night was the distinguished English singer/songwriter Harvey Andrews, who declared it to be one of the funniest things he’d ever heard.
Playing ‘Dolly’ wasn’t the only occasion Martin indulged in drag. He’d noticed the female element of his audience cackling loudly at his naughtier jokes. So, one night – and I’m still not quite sure how it happened – ‘Freda The Female Farmer’ was born. He appeared with a peroxide blond wig (doubtless some seedy old pantomime prop) a crumpled denim skirt, a pullover that was more holes than wool, and a well-worn green anorak. The zip had gone eons ago, so it was tied up with orange baler twine.
Freda’s tales of forlorn love on the farm brought the house down every night. She was impossible to follow, so she rose, like cream, to the top of the bill. She told endless stories of her countless failed affairs. ‘Never trust an electrician with no eyebrows’. ‘This man said to me, “Are you game?” I said, “yes” and he shot me’. ‘This vet was only a little fella. So, I got him to stand on two bales of hay … and when he got excited, I kicked the bales away.’
Most villages have a Woman’s Institute, and most members would come to the shows. Freda explained she’d also joined the WI and would ask her lovers to sing ‘Jerusalem’ whilst they embraced. “I tell you what, my little chariot was on fire when I saw his arrow of desire”. WI’s up and down the country struggled to sing ‘Jerusalem’ straight-faced ever again.
Freda was famous for her baler twine thongs which she demonstrated on stage. She said she sold them at Farmers’ Markets and entered them into WI competitions. The ones she gave away became collectors’ items.
On the 15th of October 2010 Three Men In A Bowtie went international. We were due to perform at Worthen Village Hall and a technical wizard called Charles Denscombe, of Microvideo in Bayston Hill, was keen to experiment. He’d noticed that there would be a spare satellite hovering over South Shropshire that night and he reckoned he could set up cameras and feed the show, by satellite, live onto our website so anybody could watch it anywhere. It was one of the earliest such transmissions from a village hall, and it worked a treat. People – mainly Shropshire exiles – all over the world tuned in. Charles also set up an email address so viewers could email to our mobile phones live on stage as we performed. It was Martin who got messages from ranchers in the Australian outback who were choking on their ‘Fosters’ because they had never seen anything like it.
His influence extended even further this Christmas. In October 2014 we’d played Shrewsbury Cattle Market. There were only 60-odd people in the audience – but one of them was the BBC producer Sybil Ruscoe. Ten years on, she is now a story-line advisor for ‘The Archers’. She never forgot that night, long ago, and so, on December 23rd, Ambridge put on a ‘Gagriculture’ show in its own imaginary village hall on Martin’s treasured Radio 4.
The character Martin inspired was played by Jasper Carrot. Martin listened to the episode in his hospital bed … and smiled.
God bless you, Martin.
Martin’s church funeral will be at St. George’s in Pontesbury on Wednesday 14th February 2024 at 10am.