An intensely private man, he had shunned the public gaze since the late Nineties, indulging his love of painting.

Yet despite this absence, Allen’s deep and lasting influence was evident from the many tributes paid by comics from different generations who lavished posthumous praise on the Irish-born comedian who became a mainstay of British television in the 1960s and 70s.

Eddie Izzard said: “He was an original. He carved his own path. I think he was the first alternative stand-up to have his own show on TV and he was a torchbearer for all the excellent Irish comics who have followed in recent years.”

Rik Mayall said: “I’m deeply saddened to hear of Dave Allen’s death. He was an absolute hero from childhood.”

Millions of fans will feel an acute pang at the news of his death at the age of 68 yesterday, and the certainty that we will never hear that mischievous, soft brogue riffing about life’s absurdities again.

A former journalist and Red Coat, raised in the old variety school, he was the first stand-up comic on primetime TV to risk doing his act sitting down alone with a glass of “whiskey” and a fag. That took extraordinary self-confidence but it made us feel that we had met him in a quiet bar and he was speaking to us personally.

He was relaxed, intimate, frequently barbed and occasionally fierce. It was like listening to an old friend.

When asked, “Is it whiskey, rye or Scotch?” he once replied, “Ye-es”, but in a Radio 4 interview in January he told Paul Jackson, the venerable comedy producer, that it was actually champagne all along. You never knew what to believe with Allen. He was a mystery wrapped in a wind-up wrapped in a load of old cock and bull.

The top of his index finger was missing and he used to make a visual joke of picking his nose with the stump. He wove the accident into a cringe-making cautionary tale where his father made him put his finger on a log as a punishment, threatening to cut it off with an axe.

He brought the blade down believing that young Dave would pull his finger away but he left it there. Ouch. Last month a former schoolmate claimed that this was just another story. Allen had been playing in a burnt-out mill with friends and the end of his finger had been crushed by a turning cog.

It was never clear where his acerbic observational humour ended and fantasy began. Michael Parkinson once said that his tales were “so tall they’ve got ice on top”. The uncertainty was part of his charm, and he protected it diligently. Paul Jackson reportedly got so little useable material out of him for his profile that he had to piece his programme together from old interviews with Clive James, Clive Anderson and Parkinson.

Yet Allen was also extraordinarily influential, in his modest, understated way. There was real bitterness about the effects of the Catholic Church on Irish life, which gave his subversive reflections on sex and religion a sharp edge.

Dennis Norden recalled: “When he started, none of those doors were open. He kicked the hole through which other comedians jumped. He was also a very rare thing: a courteous comedian. As a writer I can vouch for how unusual that is.”

He was even called the Irish Lenny Bruce, although given the furore caused by a single primetime-use of the F-word, this may be a slight overstatement. He became a kind of prophet of tectonic shifts in Irish cultural life, clearing a path for the irreverence and sexual licence of the likes of Father Ted and Graham Norton. Allen has also been called “the father of alternative comedy”. This might seem an exaggerated claim but think how many have imitated his trick of playing philosophical games with observations about life. If there is an afterlife, I hope he is sitting on a celestial stool, whiskey/champagne to hand, commenting on the absurdities of the living while the angels enjoy a chuckle.”

THE LAST LAUGH

“I’m an atheist . . . thank God.”

“You can get a watch that will tell you the time at 50 fathoms. Who in the name of Christ is going to ask you the time at 50 fathoms?”

“Am I the Irish comedian with half a finger? No, I’m the Irish comedian with nine and a half fingers.”

He gave up his 60-a-day habit in the 1980s, explaining: “I was fed up with paying people to kill me”

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