News Quiz host and funnyman tells MARION SAUVEBOIS of his inspiration

YOU won't catch Miles Jupp fibbing on stage for a few cheap laughs or embroidering pickles for comedic effect.

He doesn't exactly need to. He has endured his fill of cringe-worthy run-ins and amassed enough bonkers anecdotes – including the time Golden Globe-winner Gael Garcia Bernal taught him the basics of Backgammon in Jordan – to stitch up a solid stand-up set or two.

"We were just sitting about waiting to do a night shoot for a movie called Rosewater," recalls the comic and actor, who is best known for his role as lay reader Nigel in BBC’s Rev. "And he taught me how to play. It was awesome.

“A lot of comedy is discovering something ludicrous or an unfair scenario. It is saying ‘What if?’ Or, ‘Imagine if this happened?’ And sometimes it does and it’s unbelievable. You think, it’s ready-made material.”

Which brings him to a somewhat less flattering tale – but on the flipside, sheer comedy gold.

The News Quiz host was served a thick slice of humble pie recently, sharing a taxi with his illustrious predecessor Sandi Toksvig, by a tactless or well-intentioned - depending on which way you look at it – driver. Ever-magnanimous, Miles votes for well-meaning.

“I was in Southend recently with Sandi and Richard Osman and as we got out the taxi driver hadn’t noticed Richard or me and he said to Sandi: ‘Oh Sandi I miss you so much on the News Quiz’. Rich and I found it hysterically funny,” he catches his breath before bursting into another fit of giggles. “Sandi, bless her, said, ‘I hope you haven’t heard that’. It was absolutely perfect. You can’t make it up. I didn’t mind at all.”

In his case life does seem to be truer (and funnier) than fiction.

He certainly had a sense of déjà vu when he was cast, after weeks of “excruciating” auditions (“Maybe they were attempting to irritate me to see how annoying Nigel could be,” he chuckles at the thought.”) as Tom Hollander’s holier than thou sidekick in Rev. His father was a minister and his mum a solicitor, just like Hollander and his on-screen wife Olivia Colman. He himself studied divinity at Edinburgh University before making his TV debut as Archie the Inventor in children’s series Balamory.

“I suppose I was used to that dynamic and my mum said the atmosphere they created in the vicarage was uncomfortably close to the truth,” he volunteers. “I lived in a manse in London and we used to have people come into the house who needed help, sometimes in the day, sometimes drunkenly in the night.”

Refreshingly self-deprecating and unpretentious for someone with a CV boasting appearances in the Thick of It, Harry Potter and George Clooney’s The Monuments Men, Miles is poised to take a break “from the comforts of the TV and radio studio” to embark a new tour, Songs of Freedom. As well as his trademark anecdotes and catalogue of unadulterated embarrassments, the stand-up will throw in a few choice rants about his pet peeves and minor irritations - including but not limited to astronauts, regrets, social media, hipsters, poo, medicine, manners and ‘other stuff.’

His good-breeding, posh lilt and flawless manners – he doesn’t swear once during the interview (a first!) have often seen him pigeonholed as a PG comedian. He admits to playing up the plummy Englishness trying to cut his teeth in the industry in his early 20s though he “wouldn’t start that now”. But he rejects the “gentle comic” label. Polite indignation and artfully veiled digs take satire a long way.

“When you do the sweary stuff people don’t notice,” he explains. “In The News Quiz for example we can say some quite brutal things but because one is delivering it in a Radio 4 accent” - he emphasises ‘one’ for effect - “you sound polite while you’re actually describing people as corrupt deviants.

“You have different audiences. You have your theatre audiences and,” he pauses, weighing his words carefully, “they have every right to be entertained.”

Miles Jupp will perform at the Wyvern Theatre on September 14 at 8pm. To book go to swindontheatres.co.uk.