‘Advocate heckler. Anarchist parasite. Mixed-ability shaman’ Words if not carved in stone, then at least spelled out in white paint on the small step-ladder bungee’d to Tony Allen’s bicycle and pedalled irreligiously each Sunday from his Ladbroke Grove eyrie to his spot by the fence at Speaker’s Corner, there to be mounted by this lanky spark of ever-questioning genius- an aluminium pulpit from which not so much to lecture, but (as with pretty much everything he did) to prod, provoke, inspire; to blow your mind and have you pissing yourself with laughter.
Cesar Cruz’s maxim Disturb the comfortable, comfort the disturbed was the philosophy by which Tony conducted pretty much all his affairs. to which could be added ‘test the patient’ and… well, let’s just leave it at that. There’s another phrase he was fond of: The entertainer gives the audience what they want. The artist gives the audience what they didn’t know they wanted. Tony was definitely an artist. Best known as a comedian, he was also an activist, orator, clown, writer, mentor, teacher, and a belligerent, exasperating, beautiful, tirelessly supportive genius of a man, but in everything, he was an artist.
A teenage hustler in the smoke-filled snooker halls of Hayes, he was drawn east (a bit) by the magnet of the counter-culture, throbbing away in the squatter-belt of Ladbroke Grove, and there he soon found himself- in all senses. Tony was a natural anarchist; not one of the ‘greys’, as he termed those obsessed with dull stuff like worker councils and syndicalism (Tony was no fan of work or jobs), but one of the freewheeling, hare-brained, glorious-what-if? kind, where Lenny Bruce meets Tom Robbins meets Ken Campbell in a universe of wonder and possibility, and this exploded from Tony in a harlequin-patchwork of radical street theatre, unlicensed clowning and squatter activism before, eventually, he tried his hand at stand-up- then the preserve of ruffle-shirted racist gag-meisters of the Manning ilk- and Alternative Comedy was born. Indeed, it was Tony who coined the term, shortly after joining forces with the likeminded Alexei Sayle to launch Alternative Cabaret at the Elgin pub off the Portobello Rd. The rest is easily-googleable history. Suffice to say Tony Allen’s mucky fingerprints- part smeared clown make up, part righteous spittle, part tears of joy- can be found everywhere from the stages of the Edinburgh Fringe to the pages of the International Times to the obnoxious lip-curls of the stewards at Dismaland.
Tony passed to whatever constitutes the other side on 1st December 2023, having never done an honest day’s work since about 1971, but having made such a mark that even Bansky broke his silence to tip his hat on Radio 4s Last Word. He had very little blood family, but he had us, and we don’t half miss him. Who knows where he is now- scattered atoms in a universal consciousness, or at the great gig in the sky, finding fault with the lighting set up? ‘I’m an agnostic’ was Tony’s take. ‘I don’t know. In fact, I’d go further and say I’m a militant agnostic- I KNOW I don’t know’.