David Tynan O'Mahony (6 July 1936 – 10 March 2005), known professionally as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian,[1] satirist,[2] and actor.

His television shows were also broadcast in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Yugoslavia, Australia, and New Zealand.

David Tynan O'Mahony was born in the Firhouse suburb of Dublin on 6 July 1936, the son of an Irish father and English mother.

Allen initially followed his father into journalism, firstly joining the Drogheda Argus as a copy boy, but at the age of 19 went to Fleet Street, London.

He drifted through a series of jobs before becoming a Butlins Redcoat at Skegness in a troupe that also included British jazz trumpeter and writer John Chilton.

He changed his stage surname to "Allen" at the behest of his agent, who believed that few people in the UK could pronounce "O'Mahony" correctly.

A further explanation he gave on his programme, Dave Allen at Large, was that he often stuck his finger in his whiskey glass and it had been eaten away by strong drink.

While on tour in Australia in 1963, he accepted an offer to headline a television talk show for Channel 9, Tonight with Dave Allen, which debuted on Thursday 4 July that year[14] and was successful.

Only six months after his television début he was banned from the Australian airwaves when, during a live broadcast, he told his show's producer—who had been pressing him to go to a commercial break—to "go away and masturbate", so that he could continue an entertaining interview with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

In July 1964 it was announced that Allen would present a 'series of five-minute radio shows' for Sydney station 2UW under the title This Man's World.

In 1967, he hosted his own comedy/chat series, Tonight with Dave Allen, made by ATV, for which he received the Variety Club's ITV Personality of the Year Award.

Dave Allen also sought theatre roles and in 1972, he acted as a doctor in the Royal Court's production of Edna O'Brien's play A Pagan Place.

[20][21] Routines included sketches showing the pope (played by Allen) and his cardinals doing a striptease to music ("The Stripper") on the steps of St Peter's, aggressive priests beating their parishioners and each other, priests who spoke like Daleks through electronic confessionals and an extremely excitable pope who spoke in a Chico Marx style accent as he ordered Allen to "getta your bum outta Roma!

He sat on a high bar stool facing his audience, smoking and occasionally sipping from a glass of what he always allowed people to assume was whiskey but in fact was merely ginger ale with ice.

[citation needed] He was a sober-minded man, and although he sometimes appeared crotchety and irritable on stage he always gave off an air of charm and serene melancholy, both in his act and in real life.

And I sit and watch politicians with great cynicism, total cynicism.At the end of his act, Allen always signed off with the words "Goodnight, thank you, and may your God go with you.

[33] On 10 March 2005, at the age of 68, Allen died peacefully in his sleep as a result of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome at his home in Kensington, London.

[34] Highly regarded in Britain, Allen's comic technique and style had a lasting influence on many young British comedians including Jimmy Carr.

[3] His targets were often figures of authority, his style was observational rather than gag-driven, and his language was frequently ripe; as such, he was a progenitor for the "alternative" comedians of the 1980s.

[citation needed] In a 2017 interview with Howard Stern, Adam Sandler cited Allen as one of his first comedic influences when he saw his act at the Nevele Hotel at the age of 10.