Coren considered an
academic career, but in 1963 was offered a writing position with the humour magazine
Punch. He accepted and worked at
Punch, in various roles, for twenty-four years. He had started off his writing career by selling articles to
Punch, During the week in which he took over the editorship,
The Jewish Chronicle published a profile of him. According to journalist and fellow
Punch writer
Miles Kington, Coren's response was to rush around the office, waving a copy of the relevant edition, saying: "This is ridiculous – I haven't been Jewish for years!" When Coren left
Punch in 1987, he became editor of
The Listener, continuing in that role until 1989.
Columnist From 1971 to 1978, Coren wrote a television review column for
The Times. From 1972 to 1976, he wrote a humorous column for the
Daily Mail. He also wrote for
The Observer,
Tatler, and
The Times. From 1984, Coren worked as a television critic for
The Mail on Sunday until he moved as a humorous columnist to the
Sunday Express, which he left in 1996. In 1989, he began to contribute a column in
The Times, which continued for the rest of his life.
Broadcaster Coren began his broadcasting career in 1977. He was invited to be one of the regular panellists on
BBC Radio 4's new satirical
quiz show,
The News Quiz. He continued on
The News Quiz until the year he died. From 1996 to 2004, he was one of two team captains on the UK panel game
Call My Bluff.
Book author and scriptwriter In 1978 he wrote
The Losers, a sitcom about a wrestling
promoter starring
Leonard Rossiter and
Alfred Molina. Coren published about twenty books during his life, many of which were collections of his newspaper columns, such as
Golfing for Cats and
The Cricklewood Diet. From 1976 to 1983, he wrote the
Arthur series of children's books. One of his most successful books,
The Collected Bulletins of Idi Amin (a collection of his
Punch articles about
Amin) was rejected for publication in the United States on the grounds of racial sensitivity. They were written in a fictional English dialect, purportedly as used by African English speakers. Coren later considered his use of an ersatz dialect in portraying a person from Africa as in poor taste. These Bulletins were later made into a comedy album,
The Collected Broadcasts of Idi Amin with the actor
John Bird. Coren's other books include: •
The Dog It Was That Died (1965) •
The Sanity Inspector (1974) •
All Except The Bastard (1978) •
The Lady from Stalingrad Mansions (1978) •
The Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz (1979) •
Tissues for Men (1981) •
Bumf (1984) •
Seems Like Old Times: A Year in the Life of Alan Coren (1989) •
More Like Old Times (1990) •
A Year in Cricklewood (1991) •
Toujours Cricklewood? (1993) • ''Alan Coren's Sunday Best'' (1993) •
A Bit on the Side (1995) •
Alan Coren Omnibus (1996) •
The Cricklewood Dome (1998) •
The Cricklewood Tapestry (2002) •
Waiting for Jeffrey (2002) Coren's final book,
69 For One, was published late in 2007. ==Honours==