MILTON Jones has a new support act. After his Granddad and great uncle, the globe-trotting explorer Sir Randolph Digby Jones, the grandmaster of the one-liner has mapped out a new beginning as a country with a split personality: Great Britain.

Jones emerges on stage hidden behind a giant cut-out of this disunited isle, before peeping through a hole, or "The Peak District", as he announces with deadpan drollery to yet another full house of Milton enthusiasts of diverse ages at the Barbican.

As last time, for Milton Jones And The Temple Of Doom, he has a large screen at the centre of the stage, this time with easels at either side (later to prop up a chatterbox Scotland on one side and enervated England on the other). Plus there is a gardening step, a bird table with a telephone (talk is cheep) and a bin, more of which later.

Where other, bolshier comics might talk more directly of Brexit and its divisive implications, Jones finds a more surrealist way to capture the rising identity crisis, emphasising absurdities by having broken Britain talk for itself, as Milton makes sense of all this stuff and nonsense while "Britain waives the rules". Great Britain? Why aren't we called Modestly Satisfactory Britain, he ponders.

Jones steps aside for a brisk supporting set from Chris Stokes, ever so candid about his divorce and on stage for about as long as his marriage lasted, before a half-time tape of various songs with Jones in the title, where Milton substitutes his first name on each chorus. The more he does it, the funnier it becomes.

He then returns with his trademark bedhead hair and loud, shouldn't-be-allowed shirt, truly Out There this time, rather than clasping a map. From the off, there is more heckling than at past Milton shows in York – well, it is a Saturday night crowd – but as hard as Yorkshire wags try, no-one can keep up with Jones's quickness of wit.

He constructs the second half around a series of phone exchanges with his new crisply efficient PA offering him a series of engagements for his diary, which he then mulls over.

By his standards, it is a somewhat clunky device to provide a narrative flow, but still he spins his one-liners in gold while putting the pun into punditry in his manifesto of mirth.

Jones is at his best in a routine where the Union Flag conducts conversations with assorted nations, each ending up discarded in the aforementioned bin. "Why did you do this to us," asks the post-Brexit EU. "Dunno," shrugs the UK. Has anyone summed up the ennui of Brexit better than in that brief exchange?

As deft and daft as ever, Milton Jones is on the ball and off the wall as he watches Britain stumble and fall.