Miles Jupp stars in The Lavender Hill Mob at Cambridge Arts Theatre and says: ‘I think I’m very ill-suited to serious crime’
Comedian Miles Jupp is heading the cast of a new stage adaptation of classic Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob.
Best known for his stints on panel shows Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You, he will be joining friend Justin Edwards, who starred in The Thick of It, in the show which has been adapted by Olivier-nominated playwright Phil Porter, directed by Jeremy Sams.
The fast-paced comedy tells the story of Henry Holland, an unassuming bank clerk who dreams of stealing the van full of gold bullion he drives across London each day. When Henry learns that his new lodger makes Eiffel Tower paperweights out of lead, he devises a plan to make his dream a reality. It’s a golden opportunity to pull off the crime of the century, they’d have to be fools to mess it up.
Miles spoke with Alex Spencer during rehearsals for the show, which is coming to Cambridge Arts Theatre from Monday (January 16).
Tell me about the play and your character Henry Holland.
There are eight of us is the cast and we’re all on the stage all the time. It’s a proper ensemble piece. There’s a lot of larking about there’s a sort of gentleness to it, which I like. It’s a sort of escapist caper. You know, it’s not a play about war in Europe, or the sub-prime mortgage market or anything. It’s escapist fun, which I think is to its credit.
I like Henry’s fastidiousness and the way he eventually becomes frustrated with the sort of mundanity of his life. And after a while it makes him restless. And that he sees an opportunity and he is prepared to wait for this moment. I guess so I enjoy that.
You have to climb up a model of the Eiffel Tower on stage - have you come a cropper yet?
Touch wood, so far I have been OK but there are some stages - Cambridge is not one of them - that are not flat, and for them there is a legal limit to how many steps you can climb and be safe. But that’s not the case in Cambridge so I will just cling on to the thing as hard as I possibly can.
You’ve mentioned you are great friends with Justin Edwards, who plays Pendlebury. How did you meet?
We met in a bar in Edinburgh a long time ago and then professionally we got to know each other when we did a radio series called In and Out of the Kitchen. And that was how we got to know each other. He just made me laugh a lot. And I hope the reverse is true. So we’ve done quite a lot of hanging out together. Lots of meals, lots of drinks, but also a lot of work together.
We were going to do The Comedy of Errors together with the RSC but then Covid put paid to that. I seems to be laughing pretty much all the time with him but I can’t distill it into a crisp paragraph-long anecdote.
Have you enjoyed being back on tour?
Yes, we just tend to stay in cottages or what have you. That’s quite a nice aspect of it. Sometimes just us and sometimes other members of the cast join us. Obviously, you’ve got to do the shows, but there’s another side of it. It’s like we have gone on holiday in Wales for a week. It’s just that for part of the day we have to do a couple of shows. I’m trying to remember where I’m staying in Cambridge... I think it involves walking across Parker’s Piece.
I’ve been to Cambridge a few times and done stand up at the Junction as well as another play.
Are you relieved to be back on the road after being cooped up during the pandemic?
Yes, the first time we opened the play in Cheltenham I thought ‘Gosh, it’s really lucky that we’re able to do this now’, as there was a time when this particular thing was essentially illegal. Suddenly how nice it is to be able to do it and have this degree of freedom. I think audiences are a bit more tentative about theatre than actors are.
Were you able to work during the pandemic?
Yes, I did quite a lot of TV drama during the pandemic. I did one job in Poland and another in Morocco, so I was quite lucky. I didn’t do a lot of isolating. I think I got pinged once and had to isolate for 10 days. I did an episode Grantchester where we had to wear our masks all the time apart from when we were filming and someone shouted action. I filmed something for Disney+ last summer but that’s a secret thing, I’m afraid.’
You brought a novel out last year. Do you have any more writing plans?
Well, Justin, and I actually were planning to write a road movie together during the first half. But we said we do during the first half of the tour. But we haven’t done a thing, not a thing! I have another script that I’ve written and I would like to write another book. My first book was about travel and pretending to be a cricket reporter in India so I would quite like to write one of those again. I’d probably write something involving tootling around on trains.
Like Michael Portillo on Great British Railway Journeys?
His are more specifically about the trains. I think mine would be more about my interior monologue on trains. He has a lot of pink shirts. Is he always wearing the same outfit, no matter where he is? I’m not sure. Well, I admire his confidence.
You have said you would like to play more villains. Would you write a baddie role for yourself?
I could write myself a villain role. I apologise if you haven’t seen this yet but I did play a baddie in a Father Brown thing. I was a bit bad in Grantchester, but if you haven’t seen it, I won’t say anything as every anecdote is a potential spoiler.
And I was a villain in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, which was directed by Hugh Laurie and I absolutely loved doing it. Yeah, I just get to be the baddie unit. I got to play an opium addict in that sort of tempestuous attitude to life.
That sounds as though you were cast a little against type?
Well yes, obviously otherwise, you end up spending a lot of time wearing V necks saying ‘Excuse me’ to people, which is a living but it's not hard.
Lockdown was quite hard for parents. As a dad of five, what were the hardest moments for you?
I think it was those days when you have children and on a normal school day they would have finished already, but they have only done one of the questions they were set.
My twin boys required encouragement, so just trying to keep that show on the road was hard. But actually, I really liked being at home and larking about with everyone all the time. The hardest part was the maths. There would be a video for the children to watch and you go OK, well you watch the video and then I will come back and we will do the sums and then I come back and realise I can’t do the sums.
Long division is absolutely baffling - things like that. I assumed I knew just because I knew the words. But I couldn’t remember a thing.
What did you enjoy?
We watched a film every day and they would let me put on anything so I’d say I’m going to put on a black and white film from the 1940s and they would go OK. So I liked how cinema literate they became.
Will you be doing any more stand-up?
I have an idea for a show so I might write it and then decide. I’ve done one gig in the last three years. I did a tour in 2017-18 and that culminated at the London Palladium. And you think ‘What else do I want to do with this? I don’t know. That was pretty nice, wasn’t it? Maybe that will do.’
Is stand-up more nerve-wracking than being in a play?
The thing is when you are in a play you are responsible for many more people, whereas with stand-up you can slightly fudge things if it goes a bit awry.
With a play there are things that you need to say before a light cue will happen or you need to say a line to another person - it’s more difficult, more challenging. So I actually think doing a play is more scary because there is more riding on it. But there are moments when you’re on the comedy circuit that are scary.
Have you ever ‘died’ on stage?
Oh, yeah, definitely. People can be a bit aggressive sometimes, although not very often. If you speak to someone that hasn’t had any bad gigs they are either lying or they haven’t really done many gigs. But when you’re on the circuit, you’re working six times a week, probably. So you feel it doesn’t really matter. You can wake up again, you can do another job the next day or indeed have a bad gig and then go a couple of stops on the Tube and do another gig again that night.
You’ve got a chance to get back on a horse pretty pretty quickly. Of course, sometimes you’re a long way from home, on your own in a hotel room that you really regret having chosen and have a few dark nights of the soul.
What do you prefer: writing, stand up or acting?
I really like acting. That’s my favourite thing - or being at home. My oldest child is in his teens, so I think ‘Is there any way of doing less work?’ It doesn’t seem an ignoble aim.
What appealed to you about The Lavender Hill Mob? Were you in at the start of this production?
I do love Ealing comedies but I’m not young and keen enough anymore to watch something and go ‘Right, I want to put that on stage’. It’s more like: I enjoyed that, I will go and have a cup of tea and then watch something else now. So that’s the stage I’m at. No, I can take no credit for this play. I just turn up and do it. One of the really fun bits is the rehearsals, where you are throwing around lots of ideas around. I enjoy that period of experimentation.
Well, I probably wouldn’t reveal the details a bit of it to the Cambridge Independent. I don’t think I could, to be honest, and I don’t think there are any crimes I’m particularly anxious to pull off. I think I think it would be something a bit more old-fashioned. Being involved in a digital crime or whatever, I don’t think that is terribly glamorous. No, it’s kind of desk bound, isn’t it?
I do walk past Hatton Garden quite regularly but that theft was very much not a victimless crime. It would have to be something a bit sort of capery and heisty - that would be a bit more up my street. Something that involves sitting there using a computer wouldn’t make a good play. Perhaps I would hold up the mail train. Although that will need horses with it. I think I’m very ill-suited to serious crime.
I’m surprised this interview has finished with you trying to persuade me into a life of crime. If there is some scam you want us in on, by all means approach us. Come to the stage door and ask us for money or gold...
The Lavender Hill Mob is at Cambridge Arts Theatre from Monday, January 16-Saturday, January 21. Tickets, priced £20-£40, are available from cambridgeartstheatre.com or call the box office on 01223 503333.
