Keith Allen might be best known as Lily’s dad, and, before her ascent, as a bar-trashing hellraiser and sometime chart-troubler himself (he co-wrote two footie anthems, New Order’s World in Motion and Fat Les’s Vindaloo). But Allen is also an actor of some note (Shallow Grave on film, Pinter’s Celebration on stage, Bodies on TV) and a huge influence on the alternative comedy scene that sprang up in and around his beloved Soho in the 1980s. Performing his own brand of anarchic comedy, he was also a member of the Comic Strip alongside Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. He never achieved their mainstream success but then Allen, now 58, has always ploughed his own defiant furrow. It is to Soho that he returns in the current TV adaptation of Martina Cole’s The Runaway, playing a calm, avuncular, slightly menacing gangster. It’s a performance that suggests his acting skills have been underused. But, as he says, “I’m amazed I’ve got any kind of career at all considering what I got up to”.
The Runaway continues Sky One, Thurs, 9pm
...Soho haunts
The Groucho Club My love affair with Groucho’s started because I could drink and eat in there with no money. Inasmuch as they’d let me run up a bill — that was a courtesy that was afforded to life members. I wasn’t working all the time and didn’t have much money so it was great; it was a marriage of convenience. You could play cards there ’till four in the morning. I used it as a place I could let go, misbehave. It didn’t do my career any good because you were surrounded by producers and directors, but people should be allowed to misbehave in a private members’ club.
Kettner’s There are various places in Soho that could plot my life. After I’d separated from my first wife, Alison, on Sundays if I had any money I’d take Alfie and Lily for breakfast at Kettner’s. Which is where all the divorced fathers took their kids: it was f***ing mayhem in there; very sad fathers not very good at controlling their kids because they were acting like Father Christmas.
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...hellraising
Dental work Lily had just been born and I had her in a harness on my chest. I’d been to the dentist that day and had a tooth out under local anaesthetic. I had a beer — if you drink it’s terrible. I think I’ve been arrested every time I’ve had my teeth done. I remember the staff at the Soho Brasserie phoning the police and Alison cutting the telephone wires, and then being arrested, which I think was the first time Lily was involved with anything vaguely rock’n’roll.
Bouncers There was a pub in Soho called The Cockney Boy or something. I called this bouncer something really offensive, thinking I was just out of reach, and I wasn’t and he knocked me out. This tooth went through my lip — there was a bit of lip hanging down and I didn’t realise. When I got back to the ICA I had to cut it off. It didn’t hurt then, but, my God, the next day. There were lots of events like that — very exciting times.
...best work
The Yob [A 1985 Comic Strip take on the Jekyll and Hyde story, above] It reflected a time. It was a reaction against this new form called the music video, which was all about cranes and toys and arms and movements and tracks.
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The AA man’s salute I put on a one-man show called Whatever Happened to the AA Man’s Salute?, about the passing of an era. It was the day in the life of a stand-up comic. The Guardian said I was a cross between Freddie Starr and Buster Keaton.
One evening I saw my mum and dad and my Auntie Ethne, who’d hardly been out of Wales. I said to Dad, “This is f*** all what you think it’s going to be like — there’s language, I’m naked”. He said: “Do you think we haven’t seen you naked?”
I said: “But what about Auntie Ethne?”
...jobs
Odd jobs I used to hand-print posters for the Clash and Squeeze; I was a coal miner, a tyre-fitter, I used to cut frozen chickens in half on a bandsaw. I was an apprentice lathe operator, a stage-hand, I used to work the boats at Tenby, and I was in a puppet theatre in Covent Garden.
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Punk I used to have a punk band — we only performed in talent contests in pubs, but we had to stop it because we started winning. You had to have punk to get to alternative comedy. I’ve got a band called Pencil Case at the moment; we put on a gig once a month. I have to do an hour before the main artist. We might record an album.
Ventriloquism I played this character called Chas Barton who was a ventriloquist, and my dummy was a human kid, who was a heroin addict in real life. He was really a midget, and he died a few years ago. I used some of it at the Comedy Store when it opened. Clive Anderson said the funniest thing he ever saw at the Comedy Store was me doing a ventriloquist act. To make it a lot easier I put a bag over my head and was stark naked. With Teddy, my daughter, she’s 4, I do these two talking squid, Bill and Dave, with my hands. Maybe puppetry is in my blood.