The Essential Dave Allen: Graham McCann

The spotlight picked him out - the cool, calm man sitting up straight in his black leather chair, with a glass of the good stuff to hand and more than an evening's worth of mischief sparkling in his eyes. He welcomed you in and then started sharing stories - some of them short, many of them tall and one or two of them strange - that made you laugh and made you want him to stay a little longer and share a few more. Dave Allen - the suave sit-down, stand-up comic. His material covers from the cradle to the grave and beyond, and most of life's major themes: religion, politics, love, sex food, drink, work, leisure - and time and transience. All of Allen's best-loved jokes, monologues  and routines are here, reproduced just as the master story-teller told them. Illustrated with black and white photographs.