Following his British Comedy Award in 1991, Channel 4 quickly offered Jack Dee his own television show. The Jack Dee Show aired on Channel 4 on 26 February 1992. It was based at the ficticous Bohemia Club, with Jack hosting a variety of acts from TV stars to circus performers. The show was an instant success meeting with critical acclaim and quickly secured a second series.
Next on Channel 4 was Jack and Jeremy’s Police 4, a one off spoof which sent up the police based factual programmes of the time such as Crimewatch. This programme was co-written by and starred Jack and Jeremy Hardy.
This showed was followed up by a further collaboration with Jeremy Hardy, Jack and Jeremy’s Real Lives, which expanded on the idea of Police 4 by turning its attention to other professions. Real Lives wasn’t greatly received being moved to a midnight slot after just three episodes.
Next up for Jack Dee was a move to ITV and a new Saturday night slot, Jack Dee’s Saturday Night. The variety show gave him a chance to showcase his stand up talents to a mainstream audience, the support acts weren’t bad either including Robert Palmer, Stomp, Meatloaf and Lee Evans amongst others. The series was quickly followed by Jack Dee’s Sunday Service which was filmed in front of a live studio audience.
By 2000, Jack had moved to the BBC and presented two series of Jack Dee’s Happy Hour. Described by Jack as “neither happy, nor an hour”, the shows consisted of some stand up by Jack, some animated sketches dealing with the frustrations of life, field trips, questions from around the country and a celebrity guest who had to withstand three minutes of torment by Jack in order to get a 30 second slot to shamelessly promote whatever they wanted.
2001 was the year the whole of the UK became aware of Jack Dee, when he was a worthy winner of the very first Celebrity Big Brother much to his considerable surprise. While Jack has publicly stated that he dislikes the treatment of the housemates on the show and has refused permission for his clips to be shown again there can be no doubt that it significantly raised his profile.
In 2004, Jack Dee hosted the hugely successful Jack Dee Live at the Apollo. Jack compered the show for two full series with guests including Joan Rivers, Jo Brand and Ross Noble amongst others. The series introduced the now famous text messages routine, where the number of a mobile was put up at the start of the show and Jack read out messages that had been received on it from the studio audience at the end of the show.
Jack most recent performances have been in the sitcom Lead Balloon, which he also co-wrote. Lead Balloon is semi autobiographical, following the life of Rick Spleen, a stand up comedian and writer based in London. The show first aired on BBC Four on 4 October 2006 with the third series starting its run on BBC Two on 13 November 2008.
