Anybody besides me remember this import? I was a Benny Hill fan until I saw my first episode of Dave Allen At Large and I was totally hooked! I watched his show religiously until it was finally pulled from my local PBS station. Man, I really miss watching his show.
Damn! I loved him! Wasn’t he missing a finger? (I know, that’s a strange thing to mention - but he was missing a finger, wasn’t he?)
He was so funny. I used to watch him on L.A.'s Channel 9 way back when. I so looked forward to his show. But it’s been years since I’ve seen him.
Yeah, he was missing part of a finger. He claimed that it was from dipping it into his drink (scotch, supposedly) that he lost it.
Every now and then one of his videos converted over to US standard (NTSC) comes up for bid on eBay, I’ve bought a couple in the past and if I can scrape up the money, I’ll probably buy some more. If you ever make it down this way yosemitebabe, drop me a line and I’ll break out the videos and the scotch and we’ll have a good laugh together.
For a chance to watch Dave Allen At Large, I’ll cuddle up next to ya!
YES!!! DAVE!!!
One of the all time funniest things I ever saw was a Dave Allen skit. Very short, no dialogue. A London cop walking down the street sees a guy sitting in his car wearing full scuba gear. The cop taps on the window, which the guy rolls down and out pours gallons of water! Just completely cracked me up.
OH! OH! Remember James the Good and Faithful Servant? And the time he went over hill and dale with that block of ice which melted enough to make a perfect cube for the Master’s drink by the time he got home? Remember when old James finally packed it in? He ends up looking up the stairway to heaven and all he can say is “More bleedin’ stairs!”
How about Robin Hood, and Sherlock Holmes?! Perfect! He could have done movies with those ones!
This show was part of the “Friday Night Ritual” at the screech-owl homestead:
[li] Mom owl, Dad owl, little sister owl, and sometimes one of my friends staying overnight[/li][li] Big bowl of popcorn[/li][li] Homemade pizza: square, and lots of gooey cheese[/li][li] Bottle of Coca-cola (only time we were allowed to have it)[/li][li] And 4 hours of British Comedies on PBS[/li]
Pure bliss…
The sketch I remember included him talking about “things to do in traffic” (pretend to thread a needle - anyone watching will get annoyed because they can do it better than you; pretend the car is filling up with water; wait til the guy ahead of you is reading in stopped traffic thenhonk the horn - he’ll hit the gas and crash into the stopped car ahead of him).
I remember the missing finger - in one of his monologues he mentioned going to American westerns on a Saturday afternoon and playing cowboys and indians with his friends. No toy guns, so eeryone used their hands - they had six shooters, he had a sawed-off shotgun.
I’m going to write to my local PBS station to get this program back on. Thanks for giving me somethin positive to do today.
I used to watch Dave on Chicago PBS back in 1983. Yes, he was missing part of his index finger. One time he talked about “things you can do to amuse yourself and others when you are stuck in traffic” and he put the cut-off finger up to his nose and twirled it around. One of the folks I was watching the shoe with had lost most of his thumb in a wood chopping accident and he hollered “I can do that!” and put his thumb up to his nose. Gross. I took a picture of course and still have it. Then there was the duel between the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Or the time the Dave, playing a minister who had just finished baptizing a child, got pulled into the font when a tentacle came snaking out and grabbed him.
I remember seeing him live in Melbourne in the mid 1980s. I don’t remember too much of the show, except that there was a lot of seemingly improvised material about dogs and giving up smoking. What I do remember was that I laughed so hard I puked during the interval.
just some things I found at google:
http://members.tripod.com/~DaveAllenFan/
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/3282/daveallen.html
http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/myfavs34/daveallen.html
http://www.phill.co.uk/comedy/atlarge/
One of them mentioned that tapes can be bought at ukstuff.com. (Unfortunately, I can’t get past the opening page to verify…)
One of the best sketch comedy shows of all time. IMO, Benny Hill, whom I never really liked much, isn’t even in his league (Alexei Sayle and Ernie Kovacs are).
I was going to mention the “sawed-off shotgun” gag, but someone beat me to it.
Dave Allen first appeared on British television with his own show Tonight With Dave Allen on Associated Television (ATV) in 1967. The show transferred to London Weekend Television (LWT) for 1968-69.
There were several series of Dave Allen At Large on BBC between 1971-73 and again in 1975-76.
He moved back to ATV for Dave Allen And Friends in 1977 and Dave Allen in 1978.
He shows have always been mainly a mix of comic narrative and sketches. He is best remembered (by me) for his totally irreverent attitude to the Catholic church, and he was extremely fond of dressing up as a bishop and doing silly things.
Uh, yeah, thanks for the offer Czarcasm, but you stay on your end of the couch and I’ll stay on this end waaay over here. (But I’ll share the scotch with ya!)
Sheesh! I can’t believe I forgot some of the sketches mentioned here! One of my favorite ones was where you saw people passing the collection plate in church and just dropping their wallets and billfolds into the plate. The camera pulls back and you see Allen, dressed as a priest standing in the pulpit with a machine gun pointed at the congregation!
The one sketch of his that totally floored me though, was where he and a woman playing his wife are sitting in a restaurant and are trying to split a wishbone. The waitress is standing there watching them when it breaks and Allen gets the largest piece. Instantly the waitress’s clothes vanish and she’s standing there topless! I was stunned that PBS would show that (and as a teenage boy, I was cheering that I got to see boobs on TV)!
I remember seeing a bit of this show (we didn’t get it where I was) at a Doctor Who fan club meeting. A minister is in a church and the holy water font or baptismal font starts chasing him, yelling “EXTERMINATE!” He flees into a confessional, which then goes VWORP VWORP and dematerializes.
Damn. I’d forgotten the skits. I miss seeing his show!
Thanks! Hey - why don’t all us Dave Allen fans pile in a Winnebago, and head towards Tuckerfan’s house?
Your couch has room for all of our butts, right? And make sure to have extra scotch! 
Actually, I’ve got a couch and a love seat and some chairs. I’ll have to clean a couple of them off as they’re piled up with stuff I had to move when the water heater exploded (don’t worry, its fixed so no one has to take a cold shower) and find somewhere to put my, uh, “entertainment” 
magazines, but I could accommidate a number of people if ya’ll were crazy enough to want to come here. It’d be nice to have a get-together with a bunch of like minded fans.
(I’ll supply a couple of bottles of scotch, any more than that and you’ll have to bring yer own.)
And Legomancer, I am mortified that I never saw the sketch you describe! Anybody got a copy of that?
Mark me down as the third Doper who, on remembering his missing finger, thought of the “sawed-off shotgun” gag.
For those who didn’t get to see it, the show was like this. Dave Allen would sit in a chair on a stage with audience around him on three sides. He’d basically talk to the audience, sometimes telling funny stories and sometimes just setting up the sketches.
The sketches were filmed segments, and you might see several on the same theme. One of the recurring characters was Robin Hood, who according to Dave Allen was always inventing things. For example:
ROBIN HOOD: I’ve just invented an invisible, arrow-proof vest!
MERRY MAN: Oh, yeah? (fires arrow into Robin’s chest; Robin clutches at the arrow in pain)
ROBIN HOOD: But I haven’t put it on yet! (dies)
Dave Allen was terrific. Benny Hill wasn’t fit to wipe his ass.
My PBS station showed Dave Allen back in the early 80’s. I think they also showed “The Two Ronnies” and “Morecombe and Wise.”
I remember a sketch with two old men in wheelchairs having a “duel”. Each had a lovely young lady by his side and they then proceeded, in turn, to take off items of clothing until one old man had a heart attack…
I loved Dave Allen as a kid!
I used to watch this every Sunday night as a youth, right before Dr. Who (and then maybe Image Union if my mom didn’t catch me staying up).
“Goodnight, and may your God go with you.” – Always classy 
According to his entry at the IMDB, he’s living in Australia, he did a TV series as recently as 1997.
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Allen,+Dave+(VI)
“I always said he’d be late for his own funeral . . .”
I recall seeing Dave Allen doing a one-man show on Broadway in the early 1980s. Very funny stuff- if George Carlin were erudite and understated, he’d be Dave Allen.