Dave Allen At Large

Back in the early 1980s, my local Gainesville Public Television station, WUFT-Channel Five, carried several British comedy shows. Some were farcical like Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Not the Nine O’Clock News, and Benny Hill. Others were sitcoms like Fawlty Towers and Butterflies. They showed the original British mini-series version of Douglas Adams’s classic A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (done so well that I don’t have any inclination to see the recently made big-screen version). And there were several other good British shows as well. At the time, indeed, Gainesville Public TV was so much better than anything else that, for a while, I had my cable TV service removed and just watched local stations. The best of WUFT’s offerings in this regard was Dave Allen At Large, featuring, of course, Irish comedian Dave Allen. Dave was a master joke/storyteller, and he would intersperse hilarious skits that poked fun at everything, especially organized religion, life in Ireland, and British politics (Margaret Thatcher era), with segments when he’d just sit in a chair (holding a drink or a cigarette), and spin the funniest jokes that he, with his talented delivery, turned into side-splitters. His demeanor and comedic style reminded me a bit of Johnny Carson (another comedic genius who could have me rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter). Dave Allen died a few years ago. I’ve looked around unsuccessfully in local stores for a DVD collection of some of his old shows, but I did find an Internet site that sold them. YouTube carries clips of some of his funnier monologues and skits, but it’s best to just sit back and take in one entire show at a time (if your sides can stand it!). But I’m still holding out some hope that one of those many TV channels out there devoted to old series will dig up his fantastic series and put it back on (TV Land, for one, could stand a radical revamping of its program line-up!).