MILES Jupp has a way with words. He says: “I’ve just finished filming the third series of TV’s Gary: Tank Commander.

“I've been running around dressed as a shark. Well, not as a shark, I mean I’m not playing a shark, I’m playing a man dressing up as a shark. You’ll have to wait and see when it comes out.”

It’s this kind of innocent banter that has endeared him to comedy fans all over the country.

Actor, comedian and writer, Miles started performing stand-up on the Scottish circuit in 2000.

The following year, he won the So You Think You’re Funny and the Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year awards.

He soon became a regular performer on BBC Scotland’s Live Floor Show, and was nominated for the Perrier Best Newcomer award for his debut Edinburgh solo show, Gentlemen Prefer Brogues.

His latest show, Fibber in the Heat, tells how Miles convinced himself he could bluff his way to becoming a cricketing journalist during the India Test series of 2006.

He admits: “I’m a massive cricket fan, and was watching the final match in that exhilarating Ashes series of 2005 thinking to myself ‘this is what I want to do’.

“When your cricketing achievement was making the school’s third team, it’s a big leap to Test match standard.”

So the next best thing for Miles was to become a cricket journalist.

He decided the best place was to hang around the press box, pretending to cover matches.

Miles confesses: “I told a few lies, actually quite a few. I perhaps exaggerated my position as a cricket correspondent for a particular programme on Radio Scotland.”

In India, he quickly discovered he was out of his depth.

He says: “There is a pretty big gap between the amount you think you might know as a layman and what the correspondent really knows.”

Better off sticking to the comedy then, although when Miles did return to India to do stand-up, he did only marginally better.

“There were three good gigs, two pretty bad ones and one OK, so in cricketing terms that’s a series win.”

He’s done much better in the UK, with a series of successful stand-up tours and a number of TV appearances, including two of the most popular sitcoms in recent years, Rev and the Thick of It.

He says: “I had no idea how successful Rev would be and I’m incredibly proud to be a part of that ensemble, but the time I spent on the Thick of It was just perfect.

“When it was over, I was very depressed.”

l Miles Jupp: Fibber in the Heat is at Colchester Arts Centre, Church Street, on May 12 at 8pm. Tickets are £14, £12 concessions. Call 01206 500900 or visit www.colchesterartscentre.com