Miles Jupp freely admits to being old before his time, is clearly partial to the odd cardigan and is prone to speaking like he has a plum or two in his mouth.
It’s little surprise, then, that the subject matter in the first half of this set read like a list of gripes you’d expect to hear while taking afternoon tea with the Women’s Institute in Windsor.
An ill-advised encounter with teens who failed to obey “no ball games” signs was recounted in brilliantly minute detail, the trials and tribulations of being a father to four under-fours saw him ramp up the faux-indignation at being at the mercy of his “infant captors”, while a seething rant about stacking a dishwasher perfectly reinforced his bumbling, posh-lad persona.
So far, so Radio 4; quintessentially British, overwhelmingly pleasant, but also reassuringly clever. Jupp’s talent lies in taking trivial issues and transforming them with a terrific turn of phrase and precise language. Appropriately, the aforementioned teens he ticked off for playing basketball looked at him like he was “reading the Spanish shipping forecast”.
He also has a knack of lulling you into a false sense of security. Just when you expected another instalment of middle-England moans and groans, he turned his attention to politics, scathingly laying into Government cuts, the news agenda and the “big society”.
For the cricket-loving Jupp, the impressive change of tack was one hell of a googlie.
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