Mr Meldegg also feels that the French are alienated by Sir Alan's tragi-comedy.

ECONOMIST: Why is the laughter so sorrowful at an Ayckbourn play?

The Mr Bean star plays the title role in Quartermaine's Terms, Simon Gray's 1981 tragi-comedy about teachers at an English language school.

BBC: Rowan Atkinson wins praise for 'serious' role

And so begins a tragi-comic saga, a sequence of ludicrous if well-meant mishaps, as the manager mounts an improbable expedition to return the beautiful Yulia Ragayev's body to her native Soviet village.

ECONOMIST: New fiction

It is indeed an extraordinary tale, with many strokes of tragi-comedy, notably the alleged suicide of one of the company's geologists, Michael de Guzman, whose mysterious disembarkation from a helicopter in mid-flight was an early clue that all might not be quite as it seemed at the Busang gold reserve.

ECONOMIST: All that glisters . . .