A WAFT of gentle British humour ahead of transatlantic storm Doris. Jupp is the new(ish) host of BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, which gives him a certain stature and mid-range (not morbid) levels of gravitas.

One politely Republican tirade aside, this was humour for the repressed, too well brought up everyman.

Jupp cleverly played up to his middle of the road reputation with some wry jokes about his audience, deflected off a large polling company lest it was taken personally – gently teasing us for our driving, Waitrose shopping and television fads.

Those looking for the edgy, topical and nasty were surely disappointed. The worse that could be said about Jupp is that he swears slightly too much for it to surprise or amuse.

His is a politely British purgatory of good manners while railing against life’s many irritants. Here he is both completely in his comfort zone but also at his most amusing. Jupp’s droll remarks about family life, the sport of "trying to find where my wife has put a thing" were astute and surely timeless.

The second act fared less well than the first. It wasn’t on account of costume failure (shirt over modest paunch, no side-boobs, jeans and trainers unchanged), nor any drop-off in his lovely use of language or internal failures leading to loss of comic timing.

It was simply that Jupp’s comedy is woven from pretty thin source material, so light to normally go unnoticed, and it doesn’t bear up to being over-worked or elaborated. His skit about his actor friend rather limped along by contrast, where most of this enjoyable evening skipped  knowingly by.