Alan Coren (27 June 1938 – 18 October 2007) was an English humorist, writer and satirist who was well known as a regular panellist on the BBC radio quiz The News Quiz and a team captain on BBC television's Call My Bluff. Coren was also a journalist, and for nine years was the editor of Punch magazine.
Alan Coren was born in Southgate, North London in 1938, the son of a plumber and a hairdresser.
Coren was educated at 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.
In May 2006, Coren was bitten by an insect that gave him septicaemia which led to his developing necrotising fasciitis.
He died from cancer in 2007 at his home in North London. Survived by his wife Anne (née Kasriel), whom he married in 1963, and their two children, Giles and Victoria, who are both journalists, he was buried in Hampstead Cemetery. 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