The satirist whose wit packed a Punch
 | | Ham&High cartoonist Ken Pyne’s own tribute to Alan Coren |
THE journalist and broadcaster Alan Coren - dubbed the "Sage of Cricklewood" - has died aged 69.
The much-loved satirist made his name in the early 1970s with his Punch column, purporting to be bulletins from Ugandan dictor Idi Amin.
He was diagnosed with lung cancer three months ago and died last Thursday.
Mr Coren was the editor of Punch between 1978 and 1987.
He had also been a fixture on the Radio 4 show The News Quiz from its inception three decades ago - when it pitted the greatest wits of Private Eye and Punch against each other.
At home in Ranulf Road, Cricklewood, he was a devoted family man.
He and his wife Anne Kasriel celebrated their 44th wedding anniversary the week before his death.
His son, the journalist Giles Coren, said: "My mother is completely shattered. For my sister and me, it is very sad to lose our mentor - but it is a rite of passage.
"For my mum, it is her whole life. She is taking solace in that everyone loved him so much but he loved her and never looked at another woman.
"He was the life and soul of every party and I could see why people loved him.
"But he did lose interest in going to parties because he always had to be so funny - he had to be the entertainer.
"If I went to a party without him, everyone would say: 'Where's your father?'"
Mr Coren studied for a doctorate in modern American literature at Yale and the University of California.
But he ditched a prospective career as an academic to become a journalist and writer.
Among the 20 books he published were The Sanity Inspector, All Except The Bastard, A Year In Cricklewood, Toujours Cricklewood?, The Cricklewood Dome and The Cricklewood Tapestry.
He will have a last laugh from the grave when his final book - the appropriately-titled 69 For One - is published later this year.
He was a regular panellist on Call My Bluff since its revival in 1996. And when he moved to Regent's Park three years ago, he attributed his improved position to his "Call My Bluff pension".
Journalist Francis Wheen appeared on The News Quiz with him.
He said: "Alan was extremely humorous off duty as well as on.
"It didn't take much to get him going.
"Whenever he came into a room I always felt pleased. I always thought, 'Oh good.'
"There was something perky about him. He was brisk and business-like and he'd immediately start cracking jokes. He had an energy.
"It was a terrible shock. He is the last of a breed of humorists."
Once seated next to playwright Harold Pinter at a society dinner with the Astor family, he made reference to their shared working-class Jewish background.
"We are assimilating well," he said. Pinter punched him, much to his amusement.
Last year, he contracted necrotising fasciitis from an insect bite.
Ham&High cartoonist Ken Pyne remembers working for what he says was possibly the wittiest man in Britain.
"Alan was a very very witty man and a very nice man - although I preferred him after he left as editor because he was making a lot of changes that were not popular," he recalled.
"At one of our Toby award dinners, Francis Milby bemoaned the lack of a big write-up for the cartoonist Illingworth, who had died.
He said he hoped he'd get a bigger write-up when he went.
"Alan immediately piped up with: 'Don't worry we've already written your obituary - the work is dead, but the man still lives.'"
Mr Coren was buried yesterday at a service in Hampstead Cemetery, on Fortune Green Road, Cricklewood, of course.
Mr Coren is survived by his wife Anne, son Giles and daughter Victoria, who is also a journalist.
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