Allen was born in Liverpool, England, and was a pupil at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby, and student of English and Modern Languages at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, gaining a master's degree.
He was news editor at Autosport from 1992 to 1994, and in parallel worked as Formula One pit lane reporter for American network ESPN from 1993 to 1996.
[3] With Nigel Mansell's move to the Champ Car World Series in 1993, Allen was hired by ITV in 1994 to help present coverage of the season.
Walker wound down his career the next year by missing five races (Brazil, Europe, France, Germany, and Japan), all of which Allen covered.
ITV had considered trying a number of guest commentators to decide who would be best suited to replace Walker but instead opted to keep Allen on board full-time.
He has also written two books on Michael Schumacher: Quest for Redemption (also published in paperback as Driven to Extremes) and The Edge of Greatness.
He also moderated the official FIA press conference sessions with drivers and team principals during Formula One race weekends from 2009 to 2018.
In September 2018, he became president, based in London, helping the business to diversify from digital media into e-sports, gaming, and lifestyle motoring.
That same year, he was the executive producer on the feature film Motorsport Heroes written and directed by Manish Pandey,[17] writer of the acclaimed movie Senna.
[18] Allen was featured as one of the principal narrative voices in the hit Netflix 2021 documentary film Schumacher, directed by Michael Wech.