Miles Jupp – review

With a starring role in the award-winning church sitcom Rev, Miles Jupp knows all about devotion. But it's cricket, not God, to which Jupp genuflects in this charming piece, premiered at Edinburgh and now touring. Fibber in the Heat tells the unlikely story of Jupp's posing as a sports journalist on the England cricket team's 2006 tour of India. It's more storytelling than standup, and Jupp's studied English civility ministrates against comic fervour. But it's a likable show that combines to amusing effect Jupp's sense of his own insignificance with the hero worship he lavishes on Messrs Atherton, Botham and Flintoff.

The premise – out of date after his recent appearances on Rev, The Thick of It and Have I Got News for You? – is that Jupp is disillusioned with his faltering showbiz career. Touring the arena version of the kids' TV hit Balamory is fine as far as it goes (and Jupp is very droll about his association with that show), but it seriously restricts his freedom to watch the Ashes. So, Jupp cashes in on his media connections (which slightly undermine his claim to journalistic outsiderdom) and bags a gig as chief cricket correspondent of the Western Mail and BBC Radio Scotland.

Before you know it, Jupp is hunting with the press pack in Nagpur, and propping up the bar with David Gower. The thrill he experiences from this wrestles with his softly spoken understatement to delicious effect. "Have you ever made David Gower giggle?" he asks us. "It's amazing."

There's not much that's extraneous in this elegantly constructed tale, most of whose mots are juste. Jupp's dream job curdles when BBC Scotland won't return his calls, and the Western Mail bales when England's sole Welsh player withdraws. Stuck behind a pillar at the second Test in Chandigarh, Jupp sums up his odd journey: "Four thousand miles to write for nobody about a thing I cannot see."

There's nothing profound about the neatly packaged moral Jupp draws from this, about the need to keep your heroes at arm's length. Yet, his tribute to the simple pleasures of fandom is a touching one. It's a measure of the unflappable efficiency with which we've been reeled into his adoration of these cricketing legends that Jupp's eventual Gower-fatigue – "I couldn't get rid of him!" – gets such a big laugh. This tale of a modest ambition realised is itself modest in scope. But like leather on willow on a summer's day, it's also thoroughly congenial.