DEE’S COMPANY

In common with numerous comedians – including recent Hoot Press interviewee Alan Davies – Jack Dee is venturing back into stand-up after several years working on TV projects. In Dee’s case, this primarily involved creating and starring in Lead Balloon, the excellent sitcom in which he played the world-weary comic (surprise) Sam Spleen, who continually had to contend with all manner of awkward complications in both his personal and professional lives.

Now that he’s back performing live again, what sort of topics does Dee discuss in his show?
“With the first half, a lot of it is a review of what’s been going on this year really,” he replies. “I’m sort of bringing myself up to date as it were, but I’m also branching out into other areas as I go along. A relatively mundane subject can turn into something more unusual, so I’ve been talking quite a bit about conspiracy theories and stuff like that. The second half has been a lot about teenagers and adolescence, because all my kids are that age.”
Where does the conspiracy theory element come from?
“I have this theory that we should all say, ‘So what?’ to each other more often,” replies Dee. “If there’s an unnecessary conversation happening, just nip it in the bud with, ‘So what?’ And I always think if someone says, ‘The moon landing was based in a TV studio’ just say, ‘So what?’ Because these people want attention and want to talk, so just take the wind out of their sails and move on. It saves a lot of time.”
Having mentioned doing a review of the year, I wonder if Dee has been following the BBC Jimmy Savile story?
“Oh my word, of course,” he nods. “It’s absolutely extraordinary. There’s a sense of watching someone you really like whipping themselves to death with the BBC. There’s always been a great tradition of self-flagellation. Of course some awful things went on at some point, but we’re talking about a handful of individuals at the most, so you have to get it in perspective.
“That’s the worrying thing about it, the hysteria of it all is completely unhelpful. It’s unhelpful in terms of finding out who is to blame and what should be done about it, and it’s unhelpful in terms of allowing people to come forward and make complaints in a sane climate. A thing like child abuse is so abhorrent to most of us and so beyond the imagination, our default reaction is one of complete hysteria really, because we have no other way of processing that information, other than outspoken revulsion.”
As someone who worked in the BBC over the years, does the extent of the abuse surprise Dee?
“It doesn’t surprise me, not really,” he responds. “And you know what? if you had have took me when I was 12 and said, ‘You know what, that Jimmy Savile, he’s dodgy’, I would have went, ‘Yeah’. Someone somewhere was allowing something to go on and turning a blind eye to all kinds of stuff. It is a very weird story.”
Reverting back to happier topics, specifically Dee’s stint working on Lead Balloon, had he always wanted to write a sitcom?
“I’d always wanted to bring what I do in stand-up into a sitcom situation,” he responds. “It was a great, fun thing to do, but sitcoms are notoriously difficult to do and get right. We got away with it, so that was pleasing. I had an awful lot of fun doing it, but at the same time, after doing three series I thought, ‘Okay, we’ll do one more and I don’t know if I can keep this up for too much longer.’ It just prevented me doing anything else, ‘cos each one took a year out of my life.”
One critic of Lead Balloon was Dee’s fellow comic Stewart Lee, who took issue with the show’s similarities to Curb Your Enthusiasm. Was Dee aware of his criticism of the series?
“Someone told me but I haven’t got around to seeing it yet,” he replies. “People say, ‘So-and-so said something about it’, but I don’t rush to look it up. I’m not really bothered. People are always going to latch on to a misconception about a programme and promote that for their own needs. If that’s what you do and you get laughs, good luck to you, that’s okay.”
Whilst he has moved on from Lead Balloon, Dee certainly hasn’t given up on TV altogether. He is fronting a new series, Don’t Sit In The Front Row, which finds Dee and a group of comedians probing the lives of audience members for comedy material. The show recently commenced its run on Sky Atlantic, which seems to have moved in on a lot of the BBC’s turf of late.
“Sky Atlantic is a good channel to be on,” enthuses Dee. “There’s a lot of really interesting stuff going on there. The show has done well, it’s bedding in. I think a show like that always needs a bit of breathing space, just to grow a bit and establish what they’re really about. It’s very hard to say yes or no after the first few episodes have gone out.
“It’s been positive so far, but it might not go any further than that, and that’s okay. But it might become something that people want to see more of, so we’ll just see. It’s great fun to make, and it’s fun to do a show that involves so much improvisation and spontaneity.”
Who would have thought that Rupert Murdoch would be the patron of the new wave of British comedy?
“Yeah, I know,” acknowledges Dee. “It seems ironic ultimately, doesn’t it?”
Is that a bizarre situation to find yourself in?
“If you examine too deeply who ultimately was paying the cheques for what you were doing,” answers Dee, “you’d never get out of bed, would you?”

Jack Dee plays the Olympia, Dublin on December 1 and 2.