Dave Allen: The Immaculate Selection

This is a compilation of Dave Allen's sketches and monologues from his BBC shows in the 1970s and 1980s. He did a stand up series for ITV in 1993.

Compared to many of the comedians on television in the early 1970s you cannot help thinking that this Irish comedian with a laid back style of telling wry, funny stories, irreverent sketches, exposing political, religious and social hypocrisy sometimes with rightful anger was ahead of its time. In a way he was an alternative comedian before the term was coined.

Allen died in 2005 and apparently he never contractually allowed for his sketch shows to be repeated although the BBC did make compilation shows or Best of Dave Allen type shows over they years.

This is a reminder of the talents of Dave Allen, some of the famous sketches like the people walking packed tightly to the sardine factory. Plenty of bishop sketches. There are the jokes and funny stories such as the Irish barrister cross examining the man who might be homosexual. A lot of the humour has not aged, you can say his humour was timeless. The BBC should had given him a f*****g watch!

Dave Allen could best be described as a comedian operating on the margins of acceptability, at least as far as the mainstream television companies were concerned. He never cared about offending people, especially the members of the Catholic Church, while his characteristic stage pose, with a glass of Scotch and a cigarette, was obviously designed to antagonize the health police. No one would let him do that kind of thing today, if he were still alive.

Despite this, Allen was a genuinely funny man. He had a particular way of delivering a joke, using a matter-of-fact voice, almost as if he were telling stories to customers in a pub - and the punchline was seldom spoken in different tones. He left it to the viewers or his audiences to work out when the joke had finished. Allen was an observational comedian, someone taking look at the absurdities of the world he inhabited and satirizing them. He was never a 'stand-up' comic in the old-fashioned sense of the word, but someone born to deliver monologues in front of a captive audience.

DAVE ALLEN: THE IMMACULATE SELECTION offers a representative sample of his humor, taken from the BBC shows recorded between 1971 and 1986. Sometimes we become painfully aware of just how much the world has changed since then, both in terms of definitions of so-called "political correctness" as well as "acceptability." Some of Allen's jokes would be considered terribly off-color these days. Nonetheless, we can still admire him as a master of comic timing, ably assisted by his permanent repertory company of supporting players, including Michael Sharvell Martin and Jacqueline Clarke. Definitely work a look - not just for nostalgia buffs but for anyone interested in seeing a master performer at work.