Dave Allen

At 68 years old, Dave Allen has this physical status:

David Tynan O'Mahony (June 1936 – March 2005), better known as Dave Allen, was an Irish observational comedian and satirist who made regular television appearances in the United Kingdom from the 1960s to 1980s.

Dave Allen Show 1972–1986, which was also exported to several other European countries, was broadcast live on the BBC.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, his career saw a big revival.

He was Britain's most controversial comedian at the time of his career, inciting indignation by his regular repetition of political hypocrisy and disregard for religious legitimacy.

His television shows were also broadcast in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand.

Early life

David Tynan O'Mahony was born in Dublin's Firhouse suburb on July 6, 1936, the son of an Irish father and English mother. Gerard "Cully" Tynan O'Mahony, his father, was the managing editor of The Irish Times, as well as a niece of writer Katharine Tynan. Jean Archer, Jean Archer's mother, was a housewife. After leaving Dublin in the aftermath of the 1941 North Strand bombings, he, his brothers, and their mother spent 18 months in Keenagh: they then returned to Dublin and lived in Cherryfield, a house sandwiched between Firhouse and Templeogue Bridge. He was educated at Newbridge College, Terenure College, and the Catholic University School. Allen was 12 years old when he died, and his mother later moved the family to England when he was 14 years old.

Personal life

Allen married English actress Judith Stott in 1964. Jane (born 1965) and Edward James O'Mahony (born 1968), who later became a comedian under the name Ed Allen, were among the couple's children. Jonathan Stott's uncle Jonathan was also the stepfather of Stott's son Jonathan. In 1983, the couple announced divorce.

Allen began dating Karin Stark in 1986 and married her in 2003. Cullen, the couple's son, was born three weeks after Allen's death.

Allen's hobbies included painting, which he became more interested in later years. Private Views, his first exhibition, was held in Edinburgh in 2001.

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Career

Allen began following his father into journalism, first joining the Drogheda Argus as a copy boy, but then moved to Fleet Street, London, at the age of 19. He went through a series of jobs before becoming a Butlins Redcoat at Skegness, a troupe that also included British jazz trumpeter and writer John Chilton. He did stand-up at strip clubs at the end of each summer season, and he continued to perform in various night clubs, theatres, and working men's clubs for the next four years. When entertainment sales were slowing, he worked in a Sheffield supermarket and as a door-to-door salesman for draught excluders. At the behest of his agent's, he changed his stage name to "Allen" because few people in the United Kingdom could say "O'Mahony" correctly. Allen accepted the change because he hoped that starting with "A" would place him at the top of agents' lists.

Allen strained the top of his left index finger over the middle knuckle after catching it in a machine cog. However, he enjoyed inventing stories to explain the loss, although it was only a small part of his act. According to one, his brother John had shocked him by clicking his jaw shut as children. Dave Allen at Large, a former sportsman, had often stuck his finger in his whiskey glass and it had been eaten by strong drink. He also said it was impossible to snail the dust from his suit more often. As a youth, one of his stand-up jokes was that he and his friends would go to see a cowboy movie at the local theater before coming out to play Cowboys and Indians. "I had a sawn-off shotgun," he would mutter as he gazed down at his truncated finger. On his show, he told a long, elaborate ghost tale, with "something awful" attacking him in a scary and haunted house. Allen grabbed and bit the intruder, but the studio lights came back, and it was his own left hand.

Allen's first television appearance was on BBC talent show New Faces in 1959. He appeared on pop music shows in the early 1960s, including tours by Adam Faith and Helen Shapiro, and early 1963 was the compere of a tour of the United Kingdom, headlined by Shapiro that also included The Beatles. Sophie Tucker, an American vaudeville actress, was on tour in South Africa in 1962, and he referred to her as "one of the most charming and delightful performers with whom I've ever worked." Tucker was enthralled with him and suggested that he try his luck in Australia. He appeared on Australian television and became Wolfe's resident comedian while living there.

When on tour in Australia in 1963, he accepted an invitation to host a television talk show for Channel 9, Tonight with Dave Allen, which was very popular. However, just six months after his television debut, he was barred from the Australian airwaves when he told his show's producer—who had been urging him to go to a commercial break—to "go away and masturbate" so he could continue his enthralling interview with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Allen's fame soared unabated, and the ban was quietly lifted.

Allen returned to the United Kingdom in 1964 and made several appearances on television, including The Blackpool Show and Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium and The Val Doonican Exhibition on the BBC. He hosted Tonight with Dave Allen, ATV's first comedy/chat series for which he received the Variety Club's ITV Personality of the Year Award in 1967.

He appeared on the BBC in 1968 and appeared on The Dave Allen Show, a variety/comedy sketch series. Dave Allen at Large followed these events from 1971 to 1979. The Dave Allen Show and Dave Allen at Large, written by Alan Hawkshaw, was entitled "Blarney's Stoned" (originally released for KPM in 1969 under the name "Studio 69").

The shows began with his solo joke-telling-while-sitting-on-a-stool-and-drinking routine. Allen's stand-up routine resulted in sketches that expanded on the themes explored in the preceding monologues. In the meantime, he was looking for theatre roles. In 1972, he appeared as a physician in Edna O'Brien's production of A Pagan Place. He appeared in Peter Pan in 1973 and 1974, with family friend Maggie Smith as the leader. Mr Darling and Captain Hook were two of the London Coliseum's cast members. Allen appeared on Channel 9 in Australia (1975–1977) for his old employers.

Allen was also a social commentator, appearing in numerous television documentaries for ITV, beginning with Dave Allen in the Melting Pot (1969), looking at life in New York City and grappling with topics such as racism and heroin. Dave Allen's appearances on Play (1974) and Eccentrics at Play (1974), in which he examined colorful characters with idiosyncratic passions, were among his later programs.

Allen's satirization of religious ritual, particularly Catholic ones, caused little controversy, though often frank, giving the show a sarcastic reputation. Allen was de facto banned on Allen in 1977, but Gay Byrne did appear on The Late Late Show interview. On the steps of St Peter's, violent priests beating their parishioners and each other, priests who spoke like Daleks via electronic confessionals, and an extremely pious pope who yelled out "Getta your bum outta Roma," the pope (played by Allen) and his cardinals doing a striptease to music ("The Stripper") included drawings depicting the pope, violent priests beating their parishioners and each other, priests In Alan Bennett's television play One Fine Day, he played a struggling property man facing a mid-life crisis. From 1981 to 1990, new seasons of the comedy series, now called Dave Allen, were broadcast.

Allen's last series on the BBC in 1990 caused controversies with this parody: the BBC's last series with this joke.

This prompted MP Robert Hayward to ask a parliamentary question about "offensive words" in broadcasting. Allen returned to ITV in 1993, where he appeared in the Dave Allen Show, his last regular television series.

Allen was still living in semi-retirement at his family's home in Holland Park, west London, in the late 1990s. He had quit smoking in the 1980s and was regularly smoking during earlier television appearances. A comedy skit in 1994 talked not just about quitting smoking but also hating the stench of smoke. In between clips from his previous BBC series, he made occasional chat show appearances and talk about his work in the six-part The Unique Dave Allen (BBC, 1998).

Allen expressed regret for his youth, with a look at teenage girls' antics, the sagging skin, and aging facial hair. In 1996, he was given a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards.

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