When, late last year, Reel News met up with The League of Gentlemen, our favourite gothic horror troupe, on the Dublin set of their forthcoming film, The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, the boys were keen to acknowledge their debt to the peerless Irish comic Dave Allen.

"He was an enormous influence on us," Mark Gatiss said of Allen, who died last week. "I adored his sketches. You could see he was really into horror. I loved those wonderful stories where he would always pull the rug out at the end. We asked him to be in our Christmas special, but, sadly, he was too ill."

The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse opens here in June.