Unfortunately, in his later shows, he did resort to swearing - sometimes quite badly, which was a great shame as he was talented enough not to have to resort to such cheap tactics.

So right - it is a shame and it adds 'nothing' ....

The decline in 'standards' is a real shame - I have to laugh when I see old clips of the BBC at work - Oh, how they've changed ! Anything goes now, and they just churn out rubbish because of it .....

We watched a program about Dave Allen on BBC the other night, enjoyed it as we always liked his comedy. The presenter said something about him being banned on Irish TV because of his send ups about the church, if you want to make something popular in Ireland the best way to do it is ban it, if they had banned the Irish language everybody here would be speaking it now, can't say I ever seen him on Irish TV, but it made no difference, everybody in Ireland had the BBC channels anyway and I can tell you it was the most popular show watched in Dublin, in the days before video recorders and when colour TV was in it's infancy, the 'ColourTV Room' in the pubs would be packed on Friday nights when he was on, all the talk in work and on the bus was "Did you see Dave Alan last Friday night?". I just thought I'd point that out in case folks thought he was deserted by his own or got any wrong impression, wish we had someone like him and Les Dawson on TV today. I never knew he spent some time on Australian TV.

I agree, the standards at the BBC have shrunk dramatically, will they ever recover from the Jimmy Savile shame, it used to be such a great and highly respected organisation.