Dave Allen (comedian)
David Tynan O'Mahony, known professionally as Dave Allen, was an Irish observational comedian and satirist.
Initially becoming known in Australia during 1963–64, Allen made regular television appearances in the United Kingdom from the later 1960s and until the mid-1980s. The BBC aired his Dave Allen Show 1972–1986, which was also exported to several other European countries. His career had a major resurgence during the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the height of his career he was Britain's most controversial comedian, regularly provoking indignation at his frequent highlighting of political hypocrisy and disregard for religious authority. His television shows were also broadcast in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, former Yugoslavia, Australia and New Zealand.
Early life
David Tynan O'Mahony was born in Firhouse, Dublin, Ireland, the youngest of three sons. His father was Gerard "Cully" Tynan O'Mahony, managing editor of The Irish Times and nephew of the Irish writer Katharine Tynan, and his mother was an Englishwoman named Jean Archer. He, his brothers and mother spent around 18 months living in the village of Keenagh, County Longford after leaving Dublin in the wake of the North Strand bombings in 1941: following this, they moved back to Dublin, living at Cherryfield, a house located between Firhouse and Templeogue Bridge. His father died when he was aged 12, and his mother subsequently moved the family to England when he was aged 14. He was educated at Newbridge College, Terenure College and the Catholic University School.Career
He initially followed his father into journalism, firstly joining the Drogheda Argus as a copy boy, but at the age of 19 went to Fleet Street, London. He drifted through a series of jobs, before becoming a Butlins Redcoat at Skegness in a troupe that also included the British jazz trumpeter and writer John Chilton. At the end of each summer season he did stand-ups at strip clubs, and for the next four years appeared in night clubs, theatres and working men's clubs. When entertainment work was slow he sold toys in a Sheffield store and also worked as a door-to-door draught-excluder salesman. He changed his stage surname to "Allen" on the prompting of his agent, who believed that few people in Britain could pronounce "O'Mahony" correctly. Allen himself hoped that a surname beginning with "A" would put him at the top of any agent's list.Allen lost the top of his left forefinger above the middle knuckle after catching it in a machine cog. However, he enjoyed inventing stories to explain the loss, which became a minor part of his act. One version was that his brother John had surprised him by snapping his jaw shut when they were children, resulting in his biting it off. A further explanation he gave on his programme, Dave Allen at Large, was that he often stuck his finger in his whiskey glass, and it had been eaten away by strong drink. He also said it was worn away from repeatedly brushing the dust from his suit. One of his stand-up jokes was that, when he was a boy, he and his friends would go see a cowboy movie at the local cinema, then come out all ready to play Cowboys and Indians. Staring down at his truncated finger, he would mutter, "I had a sawn-off shotgun." On his show he told a long, elaborate ghost story, ending with "something evil" attacking Allen in a dark and haunted house. Allen grabbed and bit the attacker, the studio lights came back up, and it was his own left hand.
Allen's first television appearance was on the BBC talent show New Faces in 1959. He hosted pop music shows in the early 1960s, including tours by Adam Faith and Helen Shapiro, and in early 1963 was the compère of a tour of Britain, headlined by Shapiro, that also included The Beatles, then starting to become well known. In 1962 he had toured South Africa with American vaudeville star Sophie Tucker, whom he described as "one of the most charming and delightful performers with whom I have ever worked". Tucker was impressed with him and suggested that he try his luck in Australia. Moving there, he worked with Digby Wolfe on Australian television, becoming Wolfe's resident comedian.
While on tour in Australia in 1963, he quickly proved successful and accepted an offer to headline a television talk show with Channel 9, Tonight with Dave Allen, which was also successful. However, only six months after his television début he was banned from the Australian airwaves when, during a live broadcast, he told his show's producer—who had been pressing him to go to a commercial break—to "go away and masturbate", so that he could continue an entertaining interview with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. The ban was dropped quietly as Allen's popularity continued unabated.
Allen returned to the United Kingdom in 1964 and made a number of appearances on ITV, including The Blackpool Show and Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium, and on the BBC on The Val Doonican Show. In 1967 he hosted his own comedy/chat series, Tonight with Dave Allen, made by ATV, which earned him the Variety Club's ITV Personality of the Year Award.
He signed with the BBC in 1968 and appeared on The Dave Allen Show, a variety/comedy sketch series. This was followed from 1971–79 by Dave Allen at Large. The theme tune for The Dave Allen Show and Dave Allen at Large, written by Alan Hawkshaw, was "Blarney's Stoned".
The shows introduced his solo joke-telling-while-sitting-on-a-stool-and-drinking routine. This stand-up routine by Allen led to sketches that continued the themes touched on in the preceding monologues. Meanwhile, he began to appear in theatre. In 1972 he acted as a doctor in the Royal Court's production of Edna O'Brien's play A Pagan Place. With family friend Maggie Smith in the lead, he appeared in Peter Pan in a run during 1973 and 1974. Allen played the roles of Mr Darling and Captain Hook in the production at the London Coliseum. Allen made The Dave Allen Show in Australia for his old employers, Channel 9.
Allen was also a social commentator, appearing in several television documentaries for ITV, beginning with Dave Allen in the Melting Pot, looking at life in New York City and dealing with issues such as racism and drugs. Later programmes included Dave Allen in Search of the Great English Eccentric and Eccentrics at Play, in which he looked at colourful characters with idiosyncratic passions.
Allen's satirizing of religious ritual, especially Catholic, throughout each episode of Dave Allen at Large caused minor controversy, which – coupled with sometimes comparatively frank material – earned the show a risqué reputation. In 1977 the Irish state broadcaster RTÉ placed a de facto ban on Allen. Routines included sketches showing the Pope and his cardinals doing a striptease to music on the steps of St Peter's, aggressive priests beating their parishioners and other priests, priests who spoke like Daleks through electronic confessionals, and an extremely excitable Pope who spoke in a Chico Marx style accent as he ordered Allen to "getta your bum outta Roma!" In 1979 he played a troubled property man suffering a mid-life crisis in Alan Bennett's television play One Fine Day. New seasons of the comedy series, now titled Dave Allen, were broadcast from 1981 until 1990.
Later career
His final series for the BBC in 1990 caused controversy with a joke:This prompted MP Robert Hayward to ask a parliamentary question about "offensive language" in broadcasting. In 1993 Allen returned to ITV, where he starred in the Dave Allen Show, which was his final regular television series.
By the late 1990s Allen was living quietly in semi-retirement at home in Holland Park, west London. A keen amateur artist, he continued to exhibit his paintings. He had given up cigarettes in the 1980s, having smoked regularly during earlier television appearances. A comedy skit in 1994 talked not only about quitting smoking but hating the smell of smoke. The 90s saw him make occasional chat show appearances and discuss his career in the six-part The Unique Dave Allen, in between clips from his past BBC series.
As he grew older, he brought a rueful awareness of aging to his material, with reflections on the antics of teenagers and the sagging skin and sprouting facial hair of age. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards in 1996.
Material
Act
Allen's act was typified by a relaxed, rueful and intimate style. He sat on a high bar stool facing his audience, smoking and occasionally sipping from a glass of what he always allowed people to assume was whiskey but in fact was merely ginger ale with ice. He was a sober-minded man, and although he sometimes appeared crotchety and irritable on stage he always gave off an air of charm and serene melancholy, both in his act and in real life. Each day he pored over newspapers, scribbling notes and ideas for his routines. Along with his seated stand-up routines his television shows were interspersed with filmed sketch comedy.Religion
He was a religious sceptic as a result of his deeply held objections to the rigidity of his strict Catholic schooling. Consequently, religion became an important subject for his humour, especially the Catholic Church and the Church of England, generally mocking church customs and rituals rather than beliefs. In 1998 he explained:
The hierarchy of everything in my life has always bothered me. I'm bothered by power. People, whoever they might be, whether it's the government, or the policeman in the uniform, or the man on the door—they still irk me a bit. From school, from the first nun that belted me—people used to think of the nice sweet little ladies—they used to knock the fuck out of you, in the most cruel way that they could. They'd find bits of your body that were vulnerable to intense pain—grabbing you by the ear, or by the nose, and lift you, and say 'Don't cry!' It's very hard not to cry. I mean, not from emotion, but pain. The priests were the same. And I sit and watch politicians with great cynicism, total cynicism.
At the end of his act Allen always raised his glass and quietly toasted his audience with the words "Goodnight, thank you, and may your God go with you."
Influence on others
Highly regarded in Britain, Allen's comic technique and style had a lasting influence on many young British comedians. His targets were often figures of authority, his style was observational rather than gag-driven, and his language frequently ripe; as such he was a progenitor for the "alternative" comedians of the 1980s. Stewart Lee has cited Allen as an influence.In his native Ireland, he always remained somewhat controversial. His mocking of the Catholic Church made him unpopular amongst some Irish Catholics, while his mocking of the Ulster Protestant leader Ian Paisley made him unpopular amongst many Protestants in Northern Ireland.
In a 2017 interview with Howard Stern, Adam Sandler attributed Allen as one of his first comedic influences when he saw his act at the Nevele hotel at the age of 10.
Personal life
Introduced by mutual acquaintance Maggie Smith, Allen married English actress Judith Stott in 1964. The couple had two children, a son, Edward James Tynan O'Mahony, who is also a comedian, and a daughter, Jane. He also had a stepson in Judith's son Jonathan. The marriage ended in divorce in 1983.Allen's hobbies included painting, which he became increasingly enthusiastic about in his later years. His first exhibition, Private Views, was held in Edinburgh in 2001.
He died peacefully in his sleep as a result of Sudden arrhythmic death syndrome at his home in Kensington, London, on 10 March 2005 at the age of 68. He was survived by Karin Tynan O'Mahony, his wife of 18 months who had been his partner since 1986, and his three children from his first marriage. Three weeks after Allen's death Karin gave birth to their son, Cullen.
A dramatisation of Allen's life and career, entitled Dave Allen At Peace, was shown on RTÉ One and BBC Two in 2018, with Aidan Gillen portraying the comedian.