Alan Coren (27 June 1938 – 18 October 2007) was an English humourist and writer who wrote the script to Omnibus: The British Hero which featured Christopher Cazenove as James Bond.
Coren was a regular feature of British television and radio during the 1970s and 1980s appearing in numerous panel shows such as the BBC radio's The News Quiz and as a team captain on BBC television's Call My Bluff. He was also an editor of Punch magazine for ten years. His daughter is the TV presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell, and his son the writer Giles Coren.
Biography[]
Alan Coren was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in East Barnet, Hertfordshire, England, although he ceased to be observant early in life, and would say he "had not been Jewish for years."
Despite his posh media persona, he was 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.
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.