Miles Jupp Is the Chap You're Thinking Of

Miles Jupp builds this performance around a collision of middle-class domestic exasperation and sharp political venting. He positions himself as a prematurely aged father of four pre-school children, whom he designates his “infant captors,” struggling with pushchairs, sticky Weetabix, and the correct way to stack a dishwasher. He gets substantial mileage out of his own public-school decorum, whether he is recalling a teenager who looked at him as if he were reading the Spanish Shipping Forecast or detailing the horror of being confused on a train with Archie the Inventor from the children’s show Balamory.

Filmed at the Theatre Royal in Margate and released in 2015, the show caught Jupp at a major transition point in his career, just as he was taking over as the host of BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz. While the first half leans into observations about domestic life, the second half takes a sharp turn into politics. He skewers the coalition government’s “big society” and mocks media obsession with David Cameron eating a pasty, questioning if the state will eventually revive workhouses and brand them “Centres of Excellence”. The performance concludes with a chaotic, physical trouser-based farce that cuts right through his otherwise polite, buttoned-up demeanor.