A What's Good to Do Review
When William was younger he loved watching Balamory and I am convinced we saw every single one of the 254 episodes! Miles Jupp has come a very long way since his time playing Archie the Inventor who lived in the pink castle. I certainly never thought that 13 years later I would be choosing to watch him again, this time sat in a packed theatre waiting to see his Songs of Freedom tour. Balamory is now a source of amusement and the butt of several jokes, although I did suspect a large proportion of the audience had never been forced to watch a single episode and wouldn't have a clue who Archie was!
These days he is more often seen on “Mock the Week” or heard chairing “The News Quiz”. With a couple of well-aimed comments he makes fun of his stereotypical Radio 4 audience wearing “beige trousers and silk scarves” and adding “I thought I’d died and gone to Waitrose” this was probably quite accurate and got a few early laughs.
Now a 37 year old father of 5, living in Wales, he starts with a comment overheard whilst leaving a previous show that he is a “Nice enough bloke but what unexpected things to talk about.” Despite a promise to turn this statement on its head to bring us an “Unpleasant man banging on about things that are utterly predictable” Miles, never quite succeeds at being unpleasant and instead takes us on a rambling tour of his life, keeping the audience entertained with subjects as diverse as the unacceptable temperature of soup, being mistaken as a train-spotter, Duchy Original biscuits, being too polite and inaccurate signage.
The second half continues in much the same manner as the first, with Miles talking about his victory in Celebrity Mastermind, and then not being recognised as a celebrity by his removal man.
Miles obviously has a great following, almost filling the large Lyric Theatre, and the audience certainly enjoyed the show with laughter throughout. Whilst amusing, we did feel that the performance lacked focus and we struggled to identify a theme for the evening. In reality it was more a collection of witty comments and observations loosely strung together with no real highlights.
We received free tickets for the purpose of this review but all words and opinions are our own.
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