Crossing the culture

Jack Dee’s fourth and last series of Lead Balloon is currently being broadcast on BBC2.

In it, Dee plays the main character, Rick Spleen, who is an out-of-work comedian trying to make the big time.

The comedy of the sit-com is centred around Rick’s jealous and irritated response to the good things that he sees happening to others. Everyone is succeeding around him but he is not. His own wife works as an agent for many successful artists, including comedians, and is in constant demand. For example, in episode one, a reporter from The Daily Telegraph comes round to write a feature on their house and, in episode two, one of her clients gets nominated for three awards including best stand-up.

Trying to fit in

Rick tries to buy into what other people like but is misunderstood constantly. His inconsistency is noticed by others and leads them to laugh at him or reject him. When the Telegraph interview with his wife is about to happen, he buys a pig to keep in the house because he thinks that’s the sort of thing a media couple like them would do.

His daughter and her boyfriend are brilliantly crafted characters. They hang around the house and natter away to Rick. They always seem to end up having conversations in which they are outraged because they perceive that one of their friends has been treated unfairly.

The situations have obvious and major flaws, but these teenagers are blind to them. There is the friend who goes to a festival to be a steward but who ridiculously gets sacked when he refuses to pick up litter because he’s watching a band. There is the friend who, when disappointed with his lawnmower’s ability to vacuum the carpet, throws it out of the window of a high rise flat and bizarrely gets a fine and a caution.

Just around the corner

Their stories are little mirrors of Rick’s own delusion that fame and recognition is always just round the corner. The truth is that he is over-reaching with an over-estimation of his abilities. He is another David Brent (The Office). Everyone can see it but him. When he gets asked to stand in to present the bargain shopping channel, he lets this little bit of success blow everything out of proportion. ‘I’m working on a really exciting TV project at the moment, I was headhunted for it’, he tells the restaurant owner proudly. The reply knocks him back down again: ‘Well, it had better be an improvement on this shopping channel stuff I saw you on’.

Needless to say, the dry and aggravated style of wit, which Jack Dee is well-known for, drives the programme and gives us an ‘everyman’ who everyone can see a little bit of themselves in. As the shopping channel producer says: ‘We liked you because you look anonymous Ð you’re not a threat to anyone — no one’s going to be thinking, “I wish I was him’’’.

Misplaced pride

Followers of Jesus are not exempt from this sort of misplaced pride, competitiveness and jealousy, particularly in the Christian world. The disciples showed this when they asked Jesus which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. The Gospel writer, Matthew, reveals the pretentious nature of common human behaviour. As one of these disciples himself, he records how Jesus humiliated them all by telling them that they should model themselves on little children if they wanted to be great (Matthew 8.1-4). The idea of becoming a child was offensive to them, yet Jesus shows them that, far from being unreasonable, this is the only way to know God and enter the kingdom of heaven. We need to accept that, rather than over-reaching our proud ideas of glory for ourselves, we need to find our ambitions coming to completion in him.

Going down like a lead balloon

Trying to fit in

Just around the corner

Misplaced pride

Eleanor Margesson

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