Cat Laughs Festival artistic director on the legendary Irish comedian WHEN I was growing up at home, I had to fight tooth and nail every week for whatever half hour of television that I wanted to see, but I never had to worry when it came to the late comedian Dave Allen, because my mam and dad always wanted to see him as well. So it was a "get out of jail free" card for me, because I was still watching what I wanted, without having to use up my time.

Dave would have been someone who influenced me when I was getting into comedy, although it's really only now that I'm over 40, that I can look back and see how influential he was on my comedy career.

Dave had a very classy, intelligent and intimate style of humour, and it was always very well thought out with a wealth of intelligence and professionalism behind it. It represented to me what the best of our Irish literary storytelling tradition is all about, without being diddley-eye in any way. I loved the fact that he was able to appeal to a huge and really broad spectrum of people. It's easy to appeal to a wide range of people if you're going to clown around and do pratfalls, but he never did, and always kept his own level of dignity on stage. He brought the audience up to him, which to me, is the measure of a really good comedian.

I loved the fact that Dave was an Irish comedian, and did so well in the UK market, which was a very hard one to break into, even back then. He was born in Firhouse in Tallaght in 1936, and his father, Cullen O'Mahony, was a senior executive in The Irish Times. After school, Dave became a journalist with The Argus paper in Drogheda, where his older brother Peter worked. He moved to London at the age of 19, and had a few jobs before he got into comedy, such as working as a Butlins redcoat and hosting pop music shows. I can identify with that, as I worked in a gas company, and in import-export, and was about 27 when I got into comedy, which is later than most.

While in London, he changed his name from O'Mahony, to one that was easier for British people to pronounce. He chose the surname Allen because his agent had no one else on his books with a surname starting with 'A', and he figured that this would put him top of the list in the alphabetical index. His first television appearance was as the host of the talent show, New Faces, and he went on to become very successful as a comedian, doing warm-up for The Beatles and touring with Sophie Tucker in Australia.

He was a hit out there, and was offered a job as host of The Tonight Show in Sydney.

On one show, he was bouncing on a trampoline when he suddenly shot out of camera view, and he ended up lying unconscious on the floor. He was rushed to hospital, and the station was inundated with calls from concerned people, and an announcer had to interrupt the film that came on afterwards to tell viewers that he had regained consciousness and was fine.

Dave moved back to the UK and hosted various shows, and I much preferred the straight-talking parts of his shows to the sketches. He used to sit on a chair and make jokes in an amusing and intelligent way, while smoking and holding a glass of whiskey. It always seemed to be very natural, and he created a very intimate, cosy, warm feeling with his audience . . . you almost felt like you were having a conversation with him. Other comedians, such as Ronnie Corbett also sat in a chair and talked to the camera, but in his case it seemed really contrived and it always annoyed the shit out of me.

Dave often joked about the Catholic Church and the Church of England in his act and I think he got away with it because he dealt with religion in the same way as Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan did with Father Ted. He had a very irreverent style, and he didn't tell a joke for the sake of making someone laugh . . . he actually meant what he said. The thing was that a lot of people were thinking the same way, but were too afraid to say it, so many of them were delighted that these things were actually being said.

He was missing part of his index finger, and it didn't affect him, although I presume that he couldn't pick his nose.

Nobody was ever sure how it happened, because he told many differing stories about it, including that it was eaten away by alcohol from sticking his finger in his whiskey glass. He never tried to hide it and made a thing about it in his act, which I think was a good thing. It's like the fact that I'm going bald, and I've realised that the only way to go bald is to just accept it and move on, and don't try to do the comb-over or have a ponytail.

Dave was only 68 years old when he died in 2005, and I think many people were upset at his passing. His first marriage to actress Judith Stott had ended in divorce, and he married his second wife, Karin Stark, 18 months before he died. His third child, baby son Cullum, was born two months after his death. And borrowing the words that he used to sign himself off to his audience with, "Good night Dave, thank you, and may your God go with you."

Eddie Bannon is artistic director of the Smithwicks Cat Laughs Festival, Kilkenny, which continues until tomorrow night. See www. thecatlaughs. com