On this day: Alan Coren dies - The Jewish Chronicle

Born in Barnet to a Jewish family, in 1977 he was appointed as the first Jewish editor of the magazine Punch. A pupil at East Barnet Grammar school, he went on to study at Oxford, Yale and Berkeley, California.

Described by some as Britain’s funniest writer, he also wrote for The Times, the Daily Mail and the Sunday Express, and entertained audiences for more than 30 years as a panellist on the Radio 4's comedy The News Quiz.

He wrote more than 20 books, including the two volumes of The Collected Bulletins of Idi Amin, rejected by an American publisher on the grounds of racial sensitivity.

He perhaps didn’t always like being known as Jewish; calling a JC profile when he became editor of Punch “ridiculous” because “I haven't been Jewish for years!"