Alan Coren, who has just died after a long illness, was one of the finest comic writers of the past 40 years. He was very, very funny. That’s rare. I’d known him since he became editor of Punch in 1978. He was an inspiring editor, and good company. And he wasn’t just a great comic writer: he was also a great broadcaster. I have seldom come across anybody who could think as quickly on his feet. As with all funny men, of course, he wasn’t kidding when he joked — his jokes were serious — and he was especially serious about an England that has been vanishing these past 20 or thirty years. His last piece in The Spectator was an enthusiastic review of Griff Rhys Jones’s autobiography, an evocation of suburban values, a sort of Tizer with Rosie, as Alan described it.
Alan hated the word suburban, though.
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