Alan Watkins

Alan Rhun Watkins (3 April 1933 – 8 May 2010)[1] was for over 50 years a British political columnist in various London-based magazines and newspapers.

Alan Watkins was born in Tycroes, Carmarthenshire, to David John Watkins (1894–1980), a teacher (sometime headmaster at Llanedi School, near Tycroes), from a mining family, and Violet, also a teacher, daughter of Dr Edwin Harris, a GP.

[5][6] He coined and popularised a number of phrases that have passed into common journalistic parlance, including "chattering classes";[5] although he fleshed out the archetypal "young fogey" in The Spectator in 1984, Watkins noted that he had adopted the phrase from the journalist Terence Kilmartin, who had used it in reference to the academic John Casey, and Watkins stated that the phrase originated with Dornford Yates in 1928.

As Lord Whitelaw observed on television, it was an inaccurate phrase, because on the day in question, 21 November, his interviewer could see that he was wearing a blue suit.

[9]Watkins was in failing health for several weeks prior to his death at his London home on 8 May 2010 from renal failure, aged 77.