COMIC MEMORIES / NO GRAPH
Sep 2nd, 2008 by Sean Baite
[ K. McAleer lifted from timeout.com / D. Allen half inched from, ahem, timesonline.co.uk ]
Conor’s post last week (complete with a graph) on comics, their politics, their funniness and the correlations between the three ( Balance and Comedy do not Mix ) got me thinking on some of the comics missing from the graph. I’m sure Conor was re-cycling one of Zsa Zsa Gabor’s plastic surgeon’s technical charts for his graph and had no claims to be exhaustive but I’m glad his post dragged a pair of comics out of my memory that I was happy to welcome back into that scary scary place.
In both cases, I haven’t the foggiest notion as to the political leanings of the men in question but I couldn’t give a fiddler’s either. In all honesty, on listening to a comic perform, what he (or she) puts in the ballot box is rarely the first thing to cross my mind. First, then, into my addled remembrance came the dapper suit and the suave voice of Dave Allen. Not only was Allen a Dubliner but he was even a Tallifornian (well, Firhouse apparently) born and brought up there long before the place became an urban planner’s nightmare. Allen would’ve had a tenuous link with Flann O’Brien - in that his father was fairly high up in the Irish Times, and like Na gCopaleen, was part of the ‘Smyllie’ Irish Times era. Someone should check for me but he must be one of the faces featuring in that picture in the back of the Palace Bar in which Smyllie and O’Nolan also feature (O’Mahoney was Allen’s real name).
On looking over the wide choice of material from Allen posted on You Tube, I realise what a pioneer he was. He managed to bring off his slowburning anecdotal act in the mainstream from the late 60s onwards - a time from which I don’t even want to try to recall who his stand-up peers were (70% hackneyed Bob Monkhouse-style shite, as I remember). His act is somewhat like a bloke telling whiskey-fuelled anecdotes in a Dublin pub - a bloke with a hell of a knack for telling them and without anyone to interrupt him. To prove the point, a classic example, version 27 of what happened to his finger* :
My second recollection is a comic with a more obvious connection to Flann O’Brien - in the style of his act and in them both coming from the same county (Tyrone). I had almost completely forgotten about Kevin McAleer until I came across mention of him in an article about Stewart Lee. In looking for traces of him, I’m reminded that he first came to attention on Nighthawks. I vaguely recall seeing him live only once in the Project in the late 80s / early 90s. I seem to remember a hilarious slideshow including a photo of an owl - but the latter is possibly a sublimation of McAleer’s owl-like demeanour. As McAleer came slightly before the wave of Irish comics in vogue across the water, he seems to have kept a fairly low profile over there. He has not even been granted the accolade of a cameo on Father Ted (unlike many lesser talents). As further proof of his low profile, there is ne’er a trace of the man on You Tube. He does have his own website though (mainly giving details of tours within Ireland) Kevin McAleer Homepage McAleer’s persona and act are imbued with a healthy dose of paranoia (Tyrone’s own K Dick ?) which will be illustrated by this clip which I’ve managed to track down from RTÉ’s The View in 2004 :
K McAleer - ‘Chalk & Cheese’ extract
It looks like he’ll also have 32 county diehards on his case now (due to his domain name).
Ah, poor auld Kevin - but I’ll tell youse this, if there’s one thing an Irishman can do…
an Irishman can tell a long ramblin’ grittily surreal anecdote… ta bate them all…
* Another version has the finger having been corroded from being repeatedly dipped into his trademark glass of whiskey for a ‘taster’
I remember someone once saying of Bill Hicks (although he was referencing all great comedians) that he was not afraid of silence. He knew his material, he was comfortable with his talent. I recently watched an interview with the late George Carlin where he said his great leap forward was his ability to accept silence as an intrinsic part of his performance.
Looking again at Dave Allen, and (now) fondly remembering the surrealism of McAleer, I am reminded of their ability to allow, if not even play, on the silence, in some cases to build up the drama, in others to give adequate time to allow the joke to sink in.
Great post, and I’m just thinking, I could never have seen Allen do a Monkhouse and present a game-show, he would end up throttling the dimmer contestants…
You might be onto a winning concept there, Rob, Dave Allen doing a gameshow… Pity he’s not currently available to work - death is an awful f@@@er sometimes…
McAleer doing one would be almost as interesting, especially in his crash helmet.
Silence in standup ? I suppose it comes back to pacing and timing. Neither Allen or McAleer were ever ’speed’ comedians (Allen was more of a ’sitdown’ than a standup even).
This would seem to be going against the contemporary wisdom - as I came across quite a few bad reviews of McAleer whinging about his pace (usually English sources - I have to think they also possibly have a problem understanding his accent). I also note that there’s been whinging about the bloke that won the Perrier (or whatever it’s now called) in Edinburgh again due to his gently-paced act.
Are all comics now supposed to be Napalm Death with jokes ???
Yes, all the kids are into ’speed comedy’ these days. It’s the inevitable progression from ‘death comedy’ and ‘heavy comedy’.