Super Dave Osborne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Super Dave Osborne is a character created and played by comedian Bob Einstein. He is an inept, greedy and self-absorbed stuntman who is frequently injured when his stunts go wrong.
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[edit] Appearance history
Super Dave made his first appearance on The John Byner Comedy Hour, a 1972 TV series, and was a regular on the 1980's TV series Bizarre and was a frequent guest on Late Night With David Letterman.
In 1987 he got his own variety show named Super Dave, followed in 1992 by the animated series Super Dave: Daredevil for Hire that aired on FOX. In 1995, he starred in Super Dave's Vegas Spectacular, and in 1997, he starred in Super Dave's All Stars. Super Dave starred in a movie released in 2000, The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave.
[edit] About the character
Super Dave is supposedly an "accomplished" stuntman, though he rarely succeeds when performing the stunts depicted onscreen. His signature is to perform outrageous daredevil stunts which invariably go awry and result in his grievous injury. These included such things as riding inside the hub of a giant yo-yo suspended from a crane (the yo-yo broke free of its string and rolled off a cliff into a ravine) and being flung inside a giant football (the catapult malfunctioned and "spiked" the football instead of throwing it). After an injury has occurred, Super Dave would usually appear torn apart, stretched, or otherwise injured. One of his signature logos is a drawing of his head (in a helmet or his ballcap) on top of a pair of shoes with no body. This was occasionally how he appeared after a stunt resulted in something falling on top of him.
He is the inspiration and head of the fictional "Super Dave Compound" - a combination resort/theme park/learning centre/etc. (anything needed for a particular episode). The demonstration of many of these aspects of the compound were also the basis for many of his misadventures.
His trademarks include his frequent thumbs-ups, and his many uniforms - most of which include red, white and blue, yellow stars, and stripes, somewhat reminiscent of those worn by Evel Knievel. Often-uttered phrases include "sensational" and "putz".
He is often accompanied on his various exploits by loyal friend, sidekick and assistant stunt coordinator Fuji Hakayito. It is usually left to Fuji (or "Fooj", as Super Dave refers to him) to set whatever stunt Dave is performing in motion.
[edit] Trivia
- He is usually referred to as "Super" rather than "Dave" when only one name is used. Mike Walden often calls him "The Super One".
- He always wears some kind of headwear - usually a baseball cap or a helmet.
- Super Dave has never shed any blood on camera, even when a stunt goes unbelievably bad.
- He often claimed his jacket to be "genuine Saskatchewan seal skin" — the joke being that this Canadian province is landlocked and therefore has no seals. Furthermore there were frequent references to "genuine Saskatchewan seal skin bindings", used when discussing how he was attached to various devices for his stunts.
