Alan Coren

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Alan Coren (27 June 1938 – 18 October 2007) was an English humourist, writer and satirist who was well known as a regular panellist on the BBC radio quiz The News Quiz and a team captain on BBC television's Call My Bluff.

Coren was also a journalist, and for almost a decade was the editor of Punch magazine.

Early life

Alan Coren was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in East Barnet, Hertfordshire, in 1938, the son of builder and plumber Samuel Coren and his wife Martha, a hairdresser. In the introduction to Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks: The Essential Alan Coren, Giles and Victoria Coren conclude that Samuel Coren was "an odd job man really" and had also apparently been a debt collector.

Education

Coren was educated at Osidge Primary School and East Barnet Grammar School, followed by Wadham College at the University of Oxford to which he gained a scholarship, and where he got a first in English in 1960. After taking a master's degree he studied for a doctorate in modern American literature at Yale and the University of California, Berkeley.

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Life and career

Coren had intended to go back to school but instead chose to become a writer and journalist. He distanced himself from his Jewish roots in his later life, being'slightly ashamed' and claiming in an interview with The Independent, "I haven't been Jewish for years." '

He began his work by selling articles to Punch and was later given a full-time job. He also wrote for The New Yorker at this time.

He became Punch's literary editor in 1966 and editor in 1977, then deputy editor in 1969 and editor in 1977. He served as editor until 1987, when the number of copies began to decline.

A profile of him appeared in the Jewish Chronicle this week, during the week in which he took over the editorship. His reaction was to hurl a copy of the relevant issue, saying, "This is ridiculous!" he said, waving a copy of the relevant issue.

When Coren left Punch in 1987, he became editor of The Listener, despite being largely unchanged in that role until 1989.

Coren wrote a television review column for The Times from 1971 to 1978.

He wrote a humour column for the Daily Mail from 1972 to 1976. He has worked for The Observer, Tatler, and The Times as an editor.

Coren began as a television critic for The Mail on Sunday until he transferred as a humdrum columnist to the Sunday Express, which he left in 1996. He began contributing to The Times in 1989, a career that would go on for the remainder of his life.

Coren began his radio career in 1977. He was invited to be one of the regular panelists on BBC Radio 4's latest satirical quiz show, The News Quiz. He continued on The News Quiz until he died in 2004.

Call My Bluff, a national panel game, was one of two team captains from 1996 to 2004.

In 1978, he wrote The Losers, an unsuccessful sitcom starring Leonard Rossiter and Alfred Molina.

During his lifetime, Coren published about twenty books, many of which were collections of his newspaper columns, such as Golfing for Cats and The Cricklewood Diet.

He wrote the Arthur series of children's books from 1976 to 1983.

The Collected Bulletins of Idi Amin, one of his Punch articles about Amin, was refused for publication in the United States due to cultural sensitivity. These Bulletins were later turned into a comedy collection, The Collected Broadcasting of Idi Amin with actor John Bird. Art Barrett, an American journalist, found a copy of Coren's book on Idi Amin's bedside table after the capture of Kampala in 1979.

Coren's other books include The Dog It Was That Died (1965), The Sanity Inspector (1974), The Mistard (1978), Brumf (1980), The Baths (1978), There is a Boy in the Man of Art (1990), The Bodies on Fire (1989), The Woman from Stalingrad Mansion (1979), Some Like Old Times (1990), The Woman from Terror (1978), a Year in Cricklewood (1990), Toujours Cricklewood (1989) (1993) Alan Coren's Sunday Best (1993), A Bit on the Side (1995), Alan Coren Omnibus (1996), The Cricklewood Dome (2002), and Waiting for Jeffrey (2002). 69 For One, Coren's last book, was released late in 2007.

After John Cleese's resignation in 1973, Coren became the Rector of the University of St Andrews. He was in charge of the post until 1976.

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