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As much as The Office is about a group of people, it is Ricky Gervais’ portrayal of David Brent is what the series will be most fondly remembered for.

This is tough you know. It’s not like I’m some lazy journalist who can just write “He’s the boss from hell!” and be done with it. But that’s what makes the character so great, the fact that he’s not just some two-dimensional sitcom character.

At first glance, David Brent is just an annoying man, who tells bad jokes and fails to get respected by much of his staff. But look deeper, and you see a rather lonely man, who lies to himself about how popular and talented he is. The truth about David Brent is that if you met him, you might chuckle at his comments because it’s polite to, not because they’re at all funny.

We don’t know much about Brent’s home life or family, there’s one line in the first series about him having a brother, and his dad’s in a home, his mother most likely has died. So we have a man, living alone, his only contact with people seemingly his job, and with no interests other than comedy and the music he grew up with.

Seems pretty bleak, yet we still laugh at him. Why? Well, in my easily ignored opinion, it’s because he rarely feels sorry for himself, he’s never aware of quite how sad his life is, and when he does stop to think, drink is never that far away. Like they say though, comedy and tragedy are oft intertwined or something.

Whilst working as Head of Speech at XFM, a London based radio station, Ricky Gervais would often muck about and ad lib a character, nicknamed “seedy boss”, to the amusement of whoever was about at the time. Of which group Steve Merchant (co-creator of The Office) falls into I imagine. Ricky describes this character as “an observation on a lecherous boss who was sort of smarmy.” and it didn’t need much refinement to become the David Brent we know today.

 

Too much to fit here! Gervais’ page.