Within
minutes of Jupp bounding onto stage, in our minds we have the striking and
carefully drawn image of him reclining in a bath on stage. With soap, and
steaming hot water. And a good wash. Not a square inch missed.
This is
his looking forward to the end of the gig, returning to his hotel room and
relaxing with wine after the show.
His way
with words makes it crystal clear what he’s driving at. He even tells us he’s
carrying a little excess timber.
And when
he describes following his audience out of the theatre and into the foyer and
outside at a previous date in Spalding, it’s easy to relive that moment with
him – and appreciate the absurdity of it all.
For
adults of a certain age in the audience – the parents that is – Miles first
came into our consciousness as a very different character to the one that
dropped the C-bomb around 15 minutes into each half of this carefully drilled
new show.
Indeed,
he slips in a couple of references to his previous TV life, reminding us – with
no little angst – that teenagers like to go up to him in Wetherspoons, shout
“Archie” in his ear and run off.
It’s hard
to imagine Miles Jupp in a Wetherspoon pub, but he might surprise us. As he
says, people make an awful lot of judgements about him based on the way he
speaks, the way he looks and how he acts.
Working
from comprehensive crib-sheets, he works his way through telling us (from
YouGov surveys) what we like to wear, what we love to eat and, tellingly, where
we like to shop.
He
strikes a chord with a rant on how he’s over-polite, why Prince Charles’ Duchy
Originals belong to all of us anyway – and painfully recreated that moment when
we’re trying so hard not to have to clarify something with our wives,
especially when we can’t find something.
It’s a
great show, full of truths and shows why this now familiar face on TV is so
much like us. Even down to bemoaning the lack of buttons these days, citing the
example that having a nuclear button is inherently safer than the touchscreen
option…
