Ahead of a Dave Allen biopic, fans – including a former Irish activist – tell Chris Harvey why they loved his jokes
The great Irish comedian Dave Allen was coming to the end of his Seventies heyday by the time I was old enough to get his jokes. To be fair I hadn’t had a lot of practice; he was on TV after 10 o’clock, and though my dad (Irish, Catholic) loved him; my mum (English, C of E) thought he was lewd, crude and offensive, which meant a dearth of stay-up-late passes. The odd glimpse of Allen wearing a three-piece suit, sipping from a whiskey glass, telling stories, merely reinforced my sense that this was for adults only. I heard my dad laughing, which made it worse.
There had been no...