[2] Born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, to Peter and Sally (née Cooper) Appleton, the younger of two sons, Alistair was brought up in Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire, where as a boy he sang in the church choir at St Faith's.
[1] On graduating with an upper second class degree, Appleton left the UK for Poland,[1] where he took to writing poetry and helped to edit a children's anthology, as well as teaching at the University of Gdansk.
Appleton broke into television with Deutsche Welle, and eventually became the frontman of the channel's youth current-affairs show Heat.
[citation needed] In January 2016, he appeared on BBC One's Celebrity Mastermind, where he came joint second with 21 points, with a specialist subject of 20th-century European classical music.
As of August 2021, Appleton resided with his husband Daniel in a 1930s French sea captain's cottage in the port of Newhaven, East Sussex.