Alan Coren (27 June 1938 – 18 October 2007)[1] was an English humourist, writer and satirist who was a regular panellist on the BBC radio quiz The News Quiz and a team captain on BBC television's Call My Bluff.

His response was to rush around the office, waving a copy of the relevant edition, saying: "This is ridiculous – I haven't been Jewish for years!

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

[7] Coren published about twenty books during his life, many of which were collections of his newspaper columns,[1] such as Golfing for Cats and The Cricklewood Diet.

[1][5] These Bulletins were later made into a comedy album, The Collected Broadcasts of Idi Amin with the actor John Bird.

After the Tanzanian capture of Kampala in 1979 the American journalist Art Barrett discovered a copy of Coren's book on Idi Amin's bedside table.

Coren's other books include The Dog It Was That Died (1965), The Sanity Inspector (1974), All Except The Bastard (1978), The Lady from Stalingrad Mansions (1978), The Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz (1979), Tissues for Men (1981), Bumf (1984), Seems Like Old Times: a Year in the Life of Alan Coren (1989), More Like Old Times (1990), A Year in Cricklewood (1991), Toujours Cricklewood?

[12] In May 2006, Coren was bitten by an insect that gave him septicaemia, which led to his developing necrotising fasciitis.

[7] An anthology of his writings, called The Essential Alan Coren – Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks and edited by his children, was published on 2 October 2008.