Friday Filosophy v.03.17.2023
Friday Filosophy v.03.17.2023
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Friday Filosophy v.03.17.2023 shares quotes from Irish comedian Dave Allen.
David Tynan O’Mahony (6 July 1936 – 10 March 2005), known professionally as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian, satirist, and actor. He was best known for his observational comedy. Allen regularly provoked indignation by highlighting political hypocrisy and showing disdain for religious authority. His technique and style have influenced young British comedians.
Initially becoming known in Australia in 1963 and 1964, Allen made regular television appearances in the United Kingdom from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s. The BBC aired his Dave Allen Show from 1971 to 1986, which was also exported to several other European countries. He had a major resurgence during the late 1980s and early 1990s. His television shows were also broadcast in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Yugoslavia, Australia, and New Zealand.
At the end of each summer season, he did stand-up at strip clubs; for the next four years, he appeared in various night clubs, theatres, and working men’s clubs. Allen’s first television appearance was on the BBC talent show New Faces in 1959. 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 was successful. However, 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. The ban was quietly dropped as Allen’s popularity continued unabated. 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.
He signed with the BBC in 1968 and appeared on The Dave Allen Show, a variety/comedy sketch series. The shows introduced his solo joke-telling-while-sitting-on-a-stool-and-drinking routine. This stand-up routine by Allen led to sketches that continued the themes touched on in the preceding monologues.
As he grew older, Allen brought a rueful awareness of aging to his material, with reflections on the antics of teenagers and the sagging skin and sprouting facial hair of age. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards in 1996.
- I suppose Ireland is the best place in the world for directions. People will say to you, “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”
- And I said why did you tell me about all the right-hand turns? Why didn’t you just say take the first on the left? And he said, “Who’s giving these directions, me or you?”
- An especially important part of the Irish way of life is death. See if anybody else anywhere else in the world dies, that’s the end of it. They are dead. But in Ireland when somebody dies we lay them out and watch them for a couple of days.
- The terrible thing about dying over in Ireland is you miss your own wake. It is the best day of your life. You have paid for everything, and you can’t join in. Mind you, if you did you’d be drinking on your own.
- First day at school. The first question they ask, what do you know about God?
- Skin is actually quite an interesting subject. Do you know that we all shed skin? Did you know that? Did you know that each and every man, woman, and child sheds skin. Over an hour each and every one of us sheds something like 10,000-minute scales of skin. Over a three day period, we shed one total layer of skin. This is a fact. This is not made up. Did you know that 90% of the dust in the world is made up of dead human skin? How do you feel about that? Do you think you are dusting your house? You are not, you’re just moving your grandmother around.
- You can become grey because of various different reasons. It can be hereditary. A malfunction of the genes can cause greyness. Anemia causes greyness; lacking Vitamin B and Vitamin F causes greyness. Vast quantities of liquids cause greyness. Shock causes greyness. Terror, fear, shock, actually it’s been recorded that a man went from being totally black haired to totally white-haired in something like seven minutes.
- An old drunk is on his way into a bar when a nun standing outside the bar suddenly speaks to him. “Your drinking is the easy road to evil and damnation. Drink will pollute your body and soul. Give up the foul spirits and live a better life!” The drunk looks at her and asks, “How do you know that drinking is so bad for you?” The nun looks puzzled and shrugs. The drunk asks, “Have you ever even tried a drink?” The nun admits she has not, so the drunk tells her, “Listen, I’ll go into the bar and order myself a drink and I’ll get one for you too. I’ll bring it out here and you can taste it yourself and see that alcohol is nothing bad.” The nun reluctantly agrees, but says, “I don’t want anybody out here getting the wrong idea about me, so would you mind bringing me the drink in a paper cup?”. The drunk agrees to this and goes inside. At the bar, he tells the bartender “Give me a double shot of whiskey, and a second-half shot in a paper cup.” The bartender groans and says: “Is that bloody nun out there again?”
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