JUDGING by these photographs, Dave Allen was a big hit with the emergency services in Glasgow.

The famous comedian, known for his sit-down stand-up, whisky in one hand and cigarette in the other, visited the city many times.

In November 1974, he came for a book signing, and local firefighters were delighted to offer their support.

Dave was back in Glasgow in 1990, for his one-man show at the King’s.

This time, Times and Herald photographers captured him outside the theatre with some of the local police officers.

Fans came to watch when he sat outside the theatre to publicise the show.

“Religion is just a label,” he told the Glasgow Times’ sister newspaper The Herald.

“We can call it Catholic or Protestant, or Methodist or Muslim, but when it comes down to it, the names are just labels, which unfortunately become armies.

"We want to forget the labels and get together.”

Glasgow Times:

At the time, he told the newspaper his show would not be based on Glasgow humour.

“I think it would be patronising if I were to localise my humour by finding out the local councillor in the news,” he said.

“I would also be a fraud.”

Dave Allen, born David Tynan O’Mahony in Tallaght, Dublin, was famous for his irreverent style of comedy, poking fun at the absurdities of life, sex and religion – he once said: “I’m an atheist, thank God”.

His career began, unlikely as it may sound, at Butlin’s holiday camps, where he was one of the company’s famous redcoat entertainers at a succession of English seaside resorts in the late Fifties.

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He had his own TV show in Australia in the early Sixties and on his return to the UK, he began appearing as a regular guest on Irish crooner Val Doonican’s BBC One show, which led to his first show in 1967 on ITV.

In 1998, he said: “The hierarchy of everything in my life has always bothered me. I’m bothered by power. People, whoever they might be, whether it’s the government, or the policeman in the uniform, or the man on the door – they still irk me a bit.

"From school, from the first nun that belted me.”

Glasgow Times:

By turns entertaining and outraging his audience, he was a hit with millions of people around the world thanks mainly to his BBC television shows in the Seventies and Eighties.

He led the way for alternative comics to take the scene by storm and his observational style won him plaudits from critics and fans alike.

He died, age 68, at his home in London in 2005.

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Did you see Dave Allen when he came to Glasgow?

Share your stories and photos by emailing ann.fotheringham@glasgowtimes.co.uk or write to Ann Fotheringham, Glasgow Times, 200 Renfield Street, Glasgow G2 3QB.

Which other famous faces have you spotted in the city?