It's a mark of Miles Jupp's charm that he can do a show with a long segment about being the father of four young children and win over both non-parents and those who wish to forget for two hours that they have left their own offspring at home with a babysitter. But in Miles Jupp Is the Chap You're Thinking Of, which I saw at the Ambassadors Theatre in London, the comic expounds at length on life chez Jupp, which appears to be a whirl of cleaning Weetabix-encrusted crockery and finding faecal matter in inappropriate places.
Many will know Jupp from Rev. and The Thick of It, and he's also building up an impressive film-acting CV that includes appearances in Made in Dagenham and The Monuments Men - although he disarmingly says his audience may recognise him from the first Sherlock film, “as the waiter who has all his lines cut”. Actually Jupp sends himself up royally; his tweediness, his poshness, looking and sounding years older than he actually is (he's 34 but has always looked about 50, he says) and his out-of-touchness with modern youth all provide decent jokes at his own expense.
Much of the humour covers familiar territory (Twitter, stacking dishwashers), but Jupp can be deceptively waspish; several celebrities, including Matt Damon, Claudia Winkleman and John Bishop, get neat putdowns and anyone foolish enough to heckle may get more than they bargain for. In the lengthier set-pieces of the show, meanwhile, Jupp builds from mild-mannered asides to spluttering outrage, much of it faux but comically so.
Jupp is a wonderfully clever comic and references his most famous role – that of Archie the Inventor in children's TV show Balamory - to talk about not only the nature of fame but also individual identity; when travelling on the Tube in London a young fan recognised him and couldn't separate the character and the actor playing him. Jupp put him right, but I suspect the poor lad may be damaged for life.
In the second half of the show, which he opens with an inspired callback, Jupp moves from the personal to the political - and here he pulls the rug from under those who think his plummy tones and minor public-school education mark him out as a natural Tory. Quite the opposite, as he fillets the present government in an eloquent but still highly comic state-of-the-nation section; this time the anger is real.
There are one or two anecdotes that go on too long, and a couple of payoffs that one can see coming, but this is a superb show from a comic in cracking form.
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