Jones, Bristow’s long serving colleague, is also a humble buying clerk. He may or may not be senior to Bristow. (According to Jones he is, according to Bristow he is not) He has violent mood swings, sometimes childishly elated by a change in the weather, or deeply depressed by failure to impress Miss Pretty of Kleenaphone.

Though they have worked side by side for eight and two third years, the slyer Bristow still easily takes in Jones. Here he is in top form, during a brief period in which having previously agreed not to compete against each other for promotion, they go all out to do each other down strip 5563. Yet Jones can be just as lazy - if not more so - than Bristow if he really puts his mind to it, especially when Fudge is on holiday strip 3825

How Jones is put in charge,
following the time-honoured C-P method of selection

When Fudge is temporarily absent from the office, Jones and Bristow bitterly contest who is to be in charge. Before going on holiday they will leave huge piles of work for the other to find the next week. But they can also be considerate. When Jones has had a bad morning and for some reason gets it out his system by a vigorous session with the date-stamp, Bristow decides to wait till the afternoon before telling him that the stamp is set to the wrong date.

Bristow is keen on fresh air and the occasional attempt at exercise. He and Jones fight a constant battle about the window which Bristow likes open and Jones prefers closed. At first sight of spring Bristow hustles Jones off to the park for lunch where they sit shivering on the benches.

According to Frank Dickens' web site, Jones is married. This, frankly, does not wash. In all of the time Bristow has worked with Jones, no mention has ever been made of Jones' wife. We see them on one occasion lunching in the park and Jones confesses that he wishes he had Bristow's knowhow with women. (Fat lot of good that would do him). When Jones goes off on his first ever foreign holiday, it is Bristow who sees him off at the airport, and Jones is going alone. When a new girl starts in the office across the street Jones is quick to show off his best feature (his back, apparently) And the office cleaners have a soft spot for him, doing his laundry and sewing buttons back on his waistcoat.

Jones is perhaps a little more repressed than Bristow. When Gun and Fames send round a girlie calendar it is Jones who breaks into a sweat and wishes that they worked in a back street sleazy garage so he could put it on the wall. The calendar ends up in Bristow’s desk for a while. But so many clerks come in to see it that Fudge orders it to be thrown out. Bristow casts it to the four winds and the last we see of it is high above the Myles & Rudge Building, squabbled over by the Blondini Brothers.

The rivalry between Jones and Bristow is as long-standing as the strip itself. They lose no chance to do each other down. Consider Bristow's choice of page to be ripped out of Who's Who at Chester-Perry's when he is designing his latest paper aeroplane strip 4883.. And when Bristow spends all morning working on his last will and testament, and his colleagues hold his blotter up to the mirror to decode it, his bequest to his "good and faithful friend Jones" is revealed as "the entire contents of my in-tray".

Bristow, about to go on holiday, tells Jones he is working hard to ensure that he leaves him nothing to do. Jones reaction is automatic

Jones hates the job as much as Bristow but he is more likely to do something about it. Whereas Bristow endlessly dreams about walking out and never coming back (providing it is not raining), Jones gets the occasional interview. One of these turns out to be with Myles and Rudge, the office across the street. Bristow thinks he should go for it: "For a start it won’t be so far to come in the morning". But unlike Bristow Jones seems to have a deep, albeit frustrated, vein of loyalty toward his employer and is capable of sentiments that could not possibly come from Bristow strip 2819.

Lately Jones seems to be flowering. In recent strips, on Frank Dickens' website, he has a torrid affair with a temp, finds his affections challenged by the post-boy (the quivering knife stuck in desk is a bit far) and is then betrayed by his love who goes off with Atkins of Accounts. Here is where Bristow can invoke his philosophy of temps. And when Jones returns skint from two weeks at Stoneybeach, he is quick to begin a searing new novel entitled Hurrah for the Holidays. I think it is safe to assume that Messrs Heap and Trotwood were not able to make room for it in their publishing schedule.

On the days that Bristow may be found staring blankly at the ceiling, Jones is likely to hammering through a batch of invoices. But it makes no difference to his position in the firm. He is no more likely than Bristow to become Chief Buyer.

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