Dave Allen

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

Dave, music plays a very small part in your television shows. You don't give us much clue as to your musical taste. Have you any musical skill? Do you play an instrument? No. Uh I occasionally play the table.

Dave Allen0:20

That's about as far as I can get. Is music important in your life? Very. Um.

Dave Allen0:25

I love music. Uh I find it relaxing. I I I love to listen to music.

Presenter0:30

Da Fu began life as a journalist.

Dave Allen0:32

Uh

Presenter0:32

Uh

Dave Allen0:32

Well That was a child, I think.

Presenter0:34

Uh

Dave Allen0:34

Yeah. As a child journalist, yes. With a pencil in my hand.

Dave Allen0:39

Yes, I started I left school and uh I went because my father had been a journalist and my grandmother was a journalist.

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And I went into the Irish Independent as front clerk or front office clerk with the hopes of eventually getting up to the editorial.

Dave Allen0:57

and got slightly frustrated and then went off into the provinces and worked on a small provincial newspaper. Why did the theatre become more important?

Dave Allen1:06

It was economics, actually, more than anything else. I came to England

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Hoping that

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Within six months I would be

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the top of the pile in Fleet Street.

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and would have my own byline and would be

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The Great Reporter.

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Um

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But the

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The gentleman who sit at the editorials

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table didn't quite agree with me and I was asked to go away again.

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to the provinces.

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Which I did.

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And in the meantime I had to support myself, so I went to Butland's. I got a job as Butland Redcoat for the summer. What they call a a host. Yes.

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And uh or sports organizer.

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And from that I got stuck into a ballroom one night with a lot of campers.

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And

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The band had a break and I was asked to keep them amused while the band had a break and I tooled a couple of gags and got a laugh and uh

Dave Allen2:06

Got a couple of laughs actually if I remember right and then

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Found myself in the Redcoat show.

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And

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Eventually little bits began to come to me and

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I finished up doing a five, six minutes.

Dave Allen2:19

Buck.

Presenter2:20

At that time, of course, in the mid-50s, some of the music halls were still functioning.

Dave Allen2:24

Yes, there are. I formed a double act for another red coat because I think we both found courage in numbers.

Dave Allen2:30

Yeah.

Dave Allen2:32

And the first professional date I played was in London at what was known as Collins Music Hall. And uh we did a double act to what we used to call the the paper curtain.

Dave Allen2:43

Because as soon as comedians would walk on people would read the papers. Yes. They were waiting for the strippers. They were waiting for the strippers.

Dave Allen2:50

Great delight. We're waiting for the strippers. So what we were

Dave Allen2:53

With a total interference. Yes. Then you can.

Presenter2:57

Tenured in the music hall.

Dave Allen2:59

Then I continue, we toured all over the country and then gradually we decided that we were not really double acts, we were single acts.

Dave Allen3:07

And we broke out

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And uh

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It was gradual.

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thing. I toured with rock shows and I toured with um

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various people who are now very famous.

Presenter3:20

Yeah.

Dave Allen3:20

With Or bad patches when there wasn't any work at all? Uh very bad patches. But I used to get a job doing something else. I worked as a timekeeper and I worked as a what they call a rough painter, up rather high. Um two hundred feet up on things. That is rather high.

Presenter3:34

That is relevant.

Dave Allen3:36

I dug holes, uh not for very long actually, because uh I got a job as a labourer in Birmingham.

Dave Allen3:42

And they were laying a pavement and I was told to dig my trench from one end and join up with this fellow at the other end, who had a most beautiful straight line. Mine was all over the place, so I was asked to leave.

Presenter3:50

Uh

Dave Allen3:51

Where did you get your material from in in those early days? Did you write your own?

Dave Allen3:55

Uh no, I didn't. I like most young comedians, I would pinch it or hear a gag and use it.

Dave Allen4:03

Which I think is the only way you can do it.

Presenter4:05

What was the turning point? What was the first

Dave Allen4:07

Uh

Presenter4:07

break that you had.

Dave Allen4:08

I went to Australia.

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Uh

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I worked with Sophie Tucker.

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And she advised me to go to Australia and half-arranged it.

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And I went out there for a nightclub season.

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And while I was there they did some television shows, and somebody spotted me.

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And the company or a television company offered me a pilot show for

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A chat show, a talk show, tonight type show.

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Which I did and they offered me a contract for a year, which was very good because I could never have got the experience on British television because it was a live show, it was an hour and a half.

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Every week.

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And uh it was for a year. And that gave you the confidence? It gave me great uh knowledge regarding television studios and cameras and microphones and gradually after two or three weeks I never bothered about them. It was their job to spy in on me, not my job to work through them.

Presenter5:02

Um

Presenter5:03

So you had your success in Australian television. What happened when you came back to Britain?

Dave Allen5:08

I came back and I was lucky enough uh to have two Sunday Night London Palladium in sixty-five and

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It was at the height of its viewing powers, but

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And which

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probably brought back memories to a few people that I that I was a comedian, that I had been about and I had come back. And uh from that

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The BBC offered me a series with Val Doonigan as a as a resident comedian, which was exactly what I needed because I wasn't just did you see that comedian, uh whatever his name was.

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I was there for 13 weeks.

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We have gradually built up.

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And Val and I.

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towards the end started to do kind of odd little bits together.

Presenter5:51

Is

Dave Allen5:52

And it was I would I would say that would be the break in English television for me.

Presenter5:58

Walk at the town for the first time in London? I did, yes.

Dave Allen6:01

Uh

Dave Allen6:02

Uh

Presenter6:02

And you've played a couple of straight parts in the

Dave Allen6:04

In the theatre.

Dave Allen6:05

Yes, I did a play for Edna O'Brien at the Royal Court, which was a great experience and great fun.

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Because I'm

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what I work in, I normally work by myself.

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So certainly to have ten or twelve other people working with you and waiting for their lines to come to you so you can give your lines back to them.

Dave Allen6:24

Uh

Dave Allen6:25

It was slightly confusing because there were times I wanted to drift off and make up my own play.

Presenter6:30

Are you one of the comedians who wants to play a Hamlet?

Dave Allen6:33

No.

Dave Allen6:35

No, I don't think so. Uh I

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I admire the play tremendously. I think it's a beautiful play.

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But I don't have the training for it.

Dave Allen6:43

You have

Presenter6:44

Played in

Dave Allen6:44

No.

Presenter6:44

Yeah.

Dave Allen6:44

Uh Peter Penn. I played Captain Hook and Mr. Darling.

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You enjoyed that? Oh, tremendously.

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I love fairies and I love magic and I love eternal youth and

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and the hate that uh the children would radiate from

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From all over the I mean, it was literally a physical thing. I mean, they would throw sweets at me.

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In the final scene, uh

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Well, Peter Pan.

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Which is a ship scene.

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Uh as Captain Hook.

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when I would strut around with my cigar.

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smoking it, waiting for the hissing of these children to stop.

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That was the moment when

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All that hate would be directed at me.

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Totally alone on the stage.

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And and they would work themselves up into such a frenzy. And I always remember there was one child in the box close to the stage which was oh, oh, she all the hate, I mean, five years of age and everything that

Dave Allen7:48

She disliked I was.

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And

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She was glaring at me and sticking her tongue out and screaming and hissing and everything, and I was front, middle stage, and I moved

Dave Allen8:03

two paces towards the box and you have never seen a child disappear so quickly in your life. And after about ten seconds these little eyes came over and that's

Presenter8:12

That's all I could see after that.

Presenter8:15

Your T V shows, Dave. You sit on a stool and you tell stories and you cut away to very short blackout sketches. You don't have any back slapping guests and you don't have any dance routines. And you don't overexpose yourself on the box. You do, what, six at a time? Six shows, yes.

Dave Allen8:31

Prayer.

Presenter8:32

In six programmes, how many stories? How

Dave Allen8:35

Well, we normally record, I think, something like

Dave Allen8:38

Uh 250 sketches.

Dave Allen8:41

For each series? For the whole series, yes. Because there are sometimes we have no way of gauging whether the the thing is really funny until we plunk it in front of an audience. I mean we think it's funny. Yes. And I think we have possibly a success rate of something like 85, 90%.

Presenter8:57

So the studio audience sees a longer show than eventually goes on the air? You you cut away the dross as it were?

Dave Allen9:06

But an art it's

Presenter9:07

Uh

Dave Allen9:07

We run it straight at them, generally.

Presenter9:09

How long does the series take to assemble?

Dave Allen9:11

About five months. Generally about three to four weeks practically for every show with writing and uh

Dave Allen9:18

recording and filming.

Presenter9:21

Your religious gags about the Pope and and the confessionals and so on. Uh you're an Irishman working in a Protestant country. Doesn't this get your audience laughing at rather than with you?

Presenter9:30

Yeah.

Dave Allen9:32

Right. I have never given that any thought at all. Uh I do know that I am an Irishman. I do know that the Irish

Dave Allen9:38

people.

Dave Allen9:40

As a whole, generally laugh at religion.

Presenter9:42

Whether it be theirs or somebody else's. Yes. Do you get many complaints when one reads the odd piece in the paper about digging it out and goes over the top again, but

Dave Allen9:50

David Adam.

Dave Allen9:52

I get a fair amount, but what I I do have is a tremendous amount of friends within the clergy, both Church of England and Roman Catholic, and I hope

Dave Allen10:03

rabbis and various other people.

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And I've yet to find.

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Really the priest who gets angry.

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Or the nun who gets angry.

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Uh in general they they they can laugh where people think they shouldn't laugh.

Dave Allen10:19

And they do have a senses of humor. And what one is working about is that

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It becomes an inside gag.

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And they understand that much more than than the labours.

Presenter10:29

Yeah.