Miles Jupp: Drifting

Miles Jupp is looking good, or so think several members of his audience.

“You’ve lost weight!” comes the shout early into the set.

Looking genuinely pleased, Jupp is slightly incredulous that people know him well enough to make a comparison. “How did you know?”

He grimaces just before the sing-song reply comes: “What’s the story in Balamory?”

Jupp is almost unrecognisable as the man who once played Archie the inventor on the infamous children’s TV show. Sporting a goatee beard, which he asks us all to imagine isn’t there, this is Jupp the lithe comic, not Jupp the jolly kids entertainer.

Back in Edinburgh this year, Jupp’s show is something of a continuation of last year’s theme of exploring the special type of frustration exclusive to the well brought-up, middle-class chap.

The great thing about Jupp is his extraordinary poshness, and his best anecdotes feature situations where he finds it gets in the way of what he imagines would be normal social interaction. He’s too nice to get angry at people, even when he discovers they’ve stolen his book, but the frustration of it all has left him a grumpy old man at the ripe old age of twenty-eight.

Unfortunately, much like last year, Jupp is somewhat underwhelming despite being essentially faultless. The show is funny and charming, and Jupp himself is a perfectly interesting and likable comic to warrant spending an hour with, but the set lacks spark, lacks that certain je ne sais quoi needed to make the leap from good to great. Fortunately, though, he’s still got plenty of time ahead of him to make that breakthrough.