GEORGE FREW takes a look at Jongleurs as they get ready to gear up in Oxford...

Jongleur means wandering minstrel. It's a mediaeval expression. With his imposing height and shaven skull, comedian Jeff Innocent looks less like a wandering minstrel and more like a wandering freelance mediaeval headsman. But it's the sharp execution of his jokes that prevents him dying the death on-stage in the performance of his stand-up duties.

That's on-stage at Jongleurs, of course, the burgeoning group of comedy clubs which appear to be spreading across the country like a profitable rash.

Oxford is the latest city to acquire a branch of Jongleurs (previously the club has run nights at Freud's in Walton Street). Situated at what used to be the old wine warehouse in Hythe Bridge Street, it opens on August 7 and aims to add another veneer of sophistication to the city.

And it'll be a venue of two halves. Downstairs, Bar Risa will be a cafe bar with a continental feel, and upstairs, the comedy club will feature shows every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Monday to Wednesday, Jongleurs intends to host a variety of events - including hot bands and football forums featuring big-time celebrities of the game.

Right. So much for the commercial.

Quite a few of today's top gagmeisters cut their comedic teeth in Jongleurs clubs. Jack Dee, Julian Clary, Jo Brand and Rory Bremner, to name but four.

And now Jeff Innocent is hoping to add his moniker to the list. The day we speak, he's just got up after another gig and another late night somewhere in Hounslow.

"You come back from these places and have to stay up for a couple of hours until you wind down, you know? So you end up watching cable television. It takes over your life," he says, in the sort of deep, rolling London voice that would serve him well if they ever asked him to play a villain in The Sweeney. In his time, Jeff has been many things, including the best educated bouncer in England (he's got an MA and a BA in Cultural Theory, no less). He's also dressed windows and been a university lecturer, and at 42, he says he's still in his stand-up embryonic stage.

"I've been doing this for less than three years. It's the old cliche - I always thought that I could do it, but it's one thing being funny with your mates and it's another doing it on-stage. I'm still at the apprentice stage of things, and that's not false modesty.

"Jongleurs has been useful, in the sense that it's a big club and it gives you the idea of what it's like to play to 300 people, rather than to a handful in some room above a pub."

He's booked to play the Oxford venue when it opens, although he's been here before in his professional capacity.

"Yeah, I've played the Westgate pub. (Now the O.X.1). Good audience. I never tire of taking the piss out of the Castle Mound. It's like English Heritage gone mad.

"Oxford's like a giant theme park. With all the tourists, it must be like living in a goldfish bowl. Well, that's one side of it, anyway."

Ask him if he thinks he'll make the transition to TV and he answers: "There are lots of opportunities to make it in television these days and it's easier to be interesting than it is to be funny. So I might like to make my own documentaries in the future. I'm ambitious, but it's the sort of ambition that wants to get it right and make it good."

Jeff describes his material as "honest, social realism - fairly traditional, really" and names cheeky chappie Max Miller, Bob Hope and Alexi Sayle as influences.

"I've got this romantic view of myself as a sort of vaudevillian," he says.

Or a jongleur for the nineties.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.