Miles Jupp might seem quite a cool and calm character, with his very English obsessions with cricket and his history as Balamory’s Archie The Inventor.

But his new show, Miles Jupp Is The Chap You’re Thinking Of, reveals there is an Incredible Hulk side to his placid Dr Bruce Banner character.

“My default setting is pretty calm,” he says. “But my emotions are quite near the surface and all sorts of things can bring the anger out. It comes from nowhere and goes back to nowhere within five minutes.”

As well as talking about his experiences as a parent in the modern age, hot drinks, the ageing process and other people’s pants, he discusses what is likely to raise his ire.

“Silly little things – trying and failing to speak to a human being on the phone when I’m calling a business, pointless honking by drivers, people who dawdle, objects being in the way of something I’m reaching for...”

This last emotional trigger saw him visit hospital recently following a nasty encounter with a phone charger.

“I yanked at it and the metal bit at the end sprang back and hit me in the eyeball,” he says.

“It was like being shot. Now if my wife hadn’t left something on top of it...”

Married life has changed the theology graduate, who admits to living such a typical bachelor lifestyle pre- and post-university he earned the nickname Gary after Martin Clunes’s character in Men Behaving Badly.

He puts his previous lifestyle in his London flatshare down to a devotion to cricket.

“Someone would turn on Sky at 7.30am and it would stay on until 2.30am the next morning,” he says.

“I wasn’t working very much then, so sometimes I watched a match from first to last ball.

“I admit it was a life of takeaways and box sets, but hardly laddish.”

His love of cricket was explored in his last nationwide tour, Fibber In The Heat, which detailed how he accidentally became a newspaper reporter covering the England series in India.

Now as a father of four young children, he admits his sporting obsession has had to take a backseat.

“I’d like to be able to stay up all night watching [The Ashes] but when you have young children that’s not really an option,” he says.

“I can’t sacrifice sleep at the moment.”

Stand-up is just one of the strings to Jupp’s bow.

As well as appearing in the aforementioned Balamory, he has played a hapless press officer in Armando Ianucci’s cult political satire The Thick Of It, and Tom Hollander’s nemesis the lay reader Nigel in Rev, which has a new series starting on BBC Two next week.

A project close to his heart is the television debut of his self-penned BBC Radio 4 comedy In And Out Of The Kitchen, in which he stars as fussy culinary writer Damien Trench.

“I’m into food but I’m not a serious cook,” he says.

“Eating and drinking with people you like is one of life’s great pleasures and when I’m in town I like to find somewhere nice to eat. I’m not the sort to bring sandwiches to work.”

Alongside his television career is a growing number of appearances on stage and film, including Alan Bennett’s People at the National Theatre, roles in Made In Dagenham, The Look Of Love and Johnny English Reborn, and most recently even being directed by George Clooney in The Monuments Men.

“I thought he might be stand-offish as he’s such a big Hollywood star,” says Jupp.

“But he wasn’t. He was just like everyone else.”

Interview: Veronica Lee
Words: Duncan Hall

  • Miles Jupp Is The Chap You're Thinking Of, Corn Exchange, Church Street, Brighton, Tuesday, March 25.
  • Starts 8pm, tickets £16/£14. Call 01273 709709