Being in the thick of it with England is hard part for Jupp

Man from Balamory turns nightmare India tour into comedy of errors at Fringe

You would think that cricket would be kinder to the great-great-grandson of an England batsman who played in the very first Test match against Australia. But Miles Jupp, the actor and comic from Rev and The Thick of It, and whom many will know as Archie from Balamory, made a less than triumphant debut for his local team when he sent down 18 deliveries – "that's two overs for me" – and promptly tore his medial meniscus cartilage.

And then, when he decided to follow the 2006 England tour of India, it turned into a comedy of errors that cost him thousands of pounds and not a little emotional trauma, but which he has at least turned into a very funny show.

The saga began with uncharacteristic hubris for the quietly spoken and diffident Jupp, now 30, who studied Divinity at Edinburgh University and is a descendant of Surrey opener Henry Jupp, who played for England in 1877. "I was at the last day of the 2005 Ashes," he says. "I was unhappy doing stand-up and looked up at the media centre and thought, 'why don't I do a job where I could watch every ball of every series'?"

His father-in-law works at the Western Mail in Cardiff and Jupp persuaded the paper to let him follow bowler Simon Jones (then at Glamorgan) in India, and through another contact he arranged to file reports for Radio Scotland. But it was a disaster from the off. When Jupp landed in India he found that he had passed Jones in mid-air (the bowler had injured himself in the nets and would play no part on the tour), Radio Scotland had changed their minds and, to top it off, a clerical error meant that he had no accreditation.

Most people would have got the next plane home, but Jupp had paid for a month's travel and accommodation with the media pack and decided to stick it out. "I thought if I was in the mix, looking busy, I would pick up commissions," he says. "But of course it doesn't work like that." In reality, as the title of his show, A Fibber in the Heat, suggests, he had to blag his way into press boxes and pretend he was filing copy.

"Like an idiot, I thought it was just one big jolly, but I quickly learned that it was hard graft for the media – a constant search for working wifi and a huge amount of preparation. I thought I knew a lot about the game, but I don't. I couldn't read pitches or determine how the weather affected wickets, for instance. I was out of my depth."

Jupp nearly got rumbled when one of the journalists said: "Weren't you in Balamory?" Jupp mumbled something about being an actor before becoming a journalist – "although I didn't add that that was just seven days before, and a month before that I was in panto in Aberdeen."

Why didn't he just fess up? "I did think, 'What am I doing?' But I naively thought that I could make it work if I stayed."

There were lighter moments in this "nightmare" month; contented evenings spent in the company his heroes – Ian Botham, David Gower, Nasser Hussain and Jonathan Agnew among them – all of whom, Jupp is quick to say, were friendly. "They were avuncular even." And after he had a bad case of the trots, the old hands shared their Delhi-belly stories. "I can't name them, but one broadcaster admitted he had once shat himself mid-commentary and another that he had to strip naked when he went to the loo because of the ferociousness of his diarrhoea."

The highlight, though, was when Gower and Jupp had a beer together and the former England captain gave a "spot-on rendition" of scenes from The Life of Brian, not knowing that his one-man audience in the bar was an accomplished comedic actor. Was he tempted to reveal all at this point? Jupp deadpans: "No, I didn't go, 'Oh, when we did Balamory live there was this legendary night in Sheffield...'"

Jupp says he learned how much more rewarding it is to be a fan rather than a pundit. "It was so exciting to be in close proximity to my cricket heroes, staying in the same hotels and saying hello to the players," he says. "But then I realised that to the writers this was just normal, and I didn't want it to be normal for me – I wanted not to be impartial, to be able to jump in the air to celebrate a great catch."

And now that the would-be Neville Cardus has swapped his notebook for his old autograph book, he couldn't be happier.

Fibber in the Heat (A Cricket Tale) is at the Edinburgh Fringe from 4-29 August; visit www.gildedballoon.co.uk