Look up Alan in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Alan may refer to:

People[link]

• Alan (given name), the given name

• alan (Chinese singer), female Chinese singer active in Japan
• Alan (Mexican singer), Mexican boy band singer
• Alan (wrestler), aka Gato Eveready, who wrestles in Asistencia Asesoría y Administración
• Alan I, King of Brittany, the Great
• Alan II, Duke of Brittany
• Alan III, Duke of Brittany
• Alan IV, Duke of Brittany, aka Alan Fergant ("the Younger" in Breton language)
• Alan, abbot of Tewkesbury
• Alan of Lynn, 15th-century monk

Saint Alan or Alain

• Alain de la Roche, or Alanus de Rupe, canonized saint, "Alan of the Rock"
• Alain de Solminihac (1593-1659), French Catholic religious reformer and bishop of Cahors

Fictional characters

• Alan (Sesame Street) in the television series Sesame Street
• Alan (Modern Toss) in the television series Modern Toss
• Alan, the main antagonist in the video game Kya: Dark Lineage
• Alan, the main character in David Firth's animation Alan

Places[link]

• Alan, Russia, name of several rural localities in Russia
• Alan, Haute-Garonne, a commune in France

Other meanings[link]

• Alan (automobile), a short-lived German automobile
• Alan (crater), a crater on the Moon
• Alan (mythical creature), a race of winged spirits from Tinguian folklore
• Cyclone Alan (disambiguation), several tropical storms

See also[link]

• All pages beginning with "Alan"
• Alans
• Alen (given name)
• Allan (disambiguation)
• Alleine
• Allen (disambiguation)

References[link]

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Alan Alan
Alan Alan at The Magic Spot
Born	Alan Rabinowitz November 1926
Occupation	escapologist and magician

Alan Alan (born Alan Rabinowitz in November 1926) is a retired British escapologist and magician.^[1] He originated tricks that have subsequently become familiar features of the repertoire of other performers and he has been honoured by The Magic Circle.^[2]

Alan achieved fame through a series of stunts staged for the media. He made headline news in 1949 when a "buried alive" stunt, performed for Pathe News, nearly went wrong.^[2] He is credited with devising the burning-rope straitjacket escape,^[3] in which he is suspended upside-down from a crane with a length of thick rope doused with petrol, once ignited there is a short time to escape before the rope burns through. He appeared in a number of television magic shows, including The Magic of David Copperfield.^[4] He also "taught" the inmates of Wormwood Scrubs prison how to escape from handcuffs in his performance with a number of other magicians.^[5] In more recent years he was seen on Simon Drake's TV show Secret Cabaret.

He was proprietor of Alan Alan's Magic Spot, a magic shop based on Southampton Row, London until its lease expired in the mid 1990s.

Alan's standing and influence in the world of magic was formally recognised in 2006 when The Magic Circle chose him to receive the coveted Maskelyne award for services to British magic.^[2]

References[link]

This magic-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Alan Garner
Garner in 2011
Born	Alan Garner (1934-10-17)17 October 1934 Congleton, Cheshire, England
Occupation	Author, Folklorist
Nationality	English
Genres	Fantasy, low fantasy, folklore
Notable work(s)	The Weirdstone of Brisingamen The Moon of Gomrath Elidor The Owl Service
Spouse(s)	Griselda Garner

Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his work in children's fantasy and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.

Born into a working class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore into its plot. It was followed by a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), although Garner never produced the envisioned third part of the trilogy. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).

Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work.

Biography[link]

Early life: 1934-1956[link]

Garner was born in the front room of his grandmother's house in Congleton, Cheshire, on 17 October 1934.^[2] He grew up not far away, on Alderley Edge, a well-to-do rural Cheshire village that had effectively become a suburb of Manchester.^[2] Growing up in a "a rural working-class family",^[3] Garner's ancestry had been connected to Alderley Edge since at least the 16th century, with Alan tracing his lineage back to the death of William Garner in 1592.^[4] The Garner family had passed on "a genuine oral tradition", teaching their children the folk tales about The Edge, which included a description of a king and his army of knights that slept under it, guarded by a wizard,^[3] and in the mid 19th century, Alan's great-great grandfather Robert had carved the face of a bearded wizard onto the rock of a cliff next to a well that was known in local folklore as the Wizard's Well.^[5] Living in this rural environment, Robert Garner and his other relatives had all been craftsmen, with each successive generation trying to "improve on, or do something different from, the previous generation."^[6]

Alan's own grandfather, Joseph Garner, "could read, but didn't and so was virtually unlettered", but instead taught his grandson the various folk tales about The Edge,^[3] with Alan later remarking that as a result he was "aware of [the Edge's] magic" as a child, when he would often play there with his friends.^[7] The story of the king and the wizard living under the hill played an important part in the young Alan's life, becoming "deeply embedded in my psyche" and heavily influencing his later novels.^[3]

Garner faced several life-threatening childhood illnesses.^[2] He meanwhile went to a local village school, where he found that despite being praised for his intelligence, he was punished for speaking in his native Cheshire dialect.^[2] Moving on, he went on to attend Manchester Grammar School,^[2] before proceeding to study Classics at Magdalen College, Oxford.^{[citation needed]} Garner was the first member of his family to receive anything more than a basic education, although he noted that this resulted in him being removed from his "cultural background" and led to something of a schism with other members of his family, who "could not cope with me, and I could not cope with" them.^[3]

[edit] The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath: 1957-1964

In 1957, Garner purchased and began renovating Toad Hall at Blackden in Cheshire.

In 1957, Garner purchased Toad Hall, a Late Mediaeval building in Blackden, seven miles away from Alderley Edge. In the late 19th century the Hall had been divided into two agricultural labourers' cottages, but Garner obtained both for a total of £670, and proceeded to convert it back into a single home.^[8]

It was at Toad Hall that Garner set about writing his first novel, which would be titled The Weirdstone of Brisingamen: A Tale of Alderley. Set in Alderley Edge, it revolved around two children, Susan and Collin, who are sent to live in the area with their mother's old nurse maid, Bess, and her husband, Gowther Mossock. Setting about to explore the Edge, they discover a race of malevolent creatures, the svart alfar, who dwell in the Edge's abandoned mines and who seem intent on capturing them, until they are rescued by the wizard Cadellin who reveals that the forces of darkness are amassing at the Edge in search of the titular "weirdstone of Brisingamen". Whilst engaged in writing in his spare time, Garner attempted to gain employment as a teacher, but soon gave that up, believing that "I couldn't write and teach; the energies were too similar", and so began working as a general labourer for four years, remaining unemployed for much of that time.^[3]

Garner sent his debut novel to the publishing company Collins, where it was picked up by the company's head, Sir William Collins, who was on the look out for new fantasy novels following on from the recent commercial and critical success of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55).^[9] Garner, who would go on to become a personal friend of Collins, would later relate that "Billy Collins saw a title with funny-looking words in it on the stockpile, and he decided to publish it."^[9] Following its release in 1960, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen proved to be a "resounding success... both critically and commercially", later being described as "a tour de force of the imagination, a novel that showed almost every writer who came afterwards what it was possible to achieve in novels ostensibly published for children."^[10]

With his first book published, Garner abandoned his work as a labourer and gained a job as a freelance television reporter, living a "hand to mouth" lifestyle on a "shoestring" budget.^[3] He also worked on a sequel to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which would be known as The Moon of Gomrath.

The Moon of Gomrath also revolves around the adventures of Colin and Susan, with the latter being possessed by a malevolent creature called the Brollachan who has recently entered the world. With the help of the wizard Cadellin, the Brollachan is exorcised, but Susan's soul also leaves her body, being sent to another dimension, leading Colin to find a way to bring it back.

In a later interview given in 1989, Garner admitted that he had left scope for a third book following the adventures of Collin and Susan, envisioning a trilogy, but that he had intentionally decided not to write it, instead moving on to write something different.^[3] However Boneland, the conclusion to the sequence, will be published in August 2012.^[11]

[edit] Elidor, The Owl Service and Red Shift: 1964-1973

Set in contemporary Manchester, Elidor told the story of four children who enter into a broken down Victorian church, only to find a portal to the magical realm of Elidor. Here, they are entrusted by King Malebron to help rescue four treasures which have been stolen by the forces of evil who are attempting to take control of Elidor. Successfully doing so, the children return home to Manchester with the treasures, but are pursued by the evil forces who need them to seal their victory.

The Owl Service was set in Wales, and used as its basis a story in the Mediaeval Welsh epic, the Mabinogion.

Garner at his home in Blackden, 2011.

[edit] The Stone Book Quartet and Folkloric collections: 1974-1994

The Stone Book (which received the Phoenix Award in 1996) is poetic in style and inspiration. Garner pays particular attention to language, and strives to render the cadence of the Cheshire tongue in modern English. This he explains by the sense of anger he felt on reading "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight": the footnotes would not have been needed by his father. This and other aspects of his writing are the subject of Neil Philip's A Fine Anger, (Collins, 1981), which offers a detailed analysis of his work.

In a 1989 interview, Garner noted that whilst writing The Stone Book Quartet had been "exhausting", it had been "the most rewarding of everything" he'd done to date.^[3]

[edit] Strandloper, Thursbitch and Boneland: 1995-present

1996 saw the publication of Garner's novel Strandloper.

His collection of essays and public talks, The Voice That Thunders, contains much autobiographical material (including an account of his life with bipolar disorder), as well as critical reflection upon folklore and language, literature and education, the nature of myth and time. Garner is an accomplished public speaker.

Garner's next novel, Thursbitch, was published in 2003.

Garner's latest novel, Boneland, is set for release in 2012.

Literary style[link]

Although Garner's early work is often labelled as "children's literature", Garner himself rejects such a description, informing one interviewer that "I certainly have never written for children" but that instead he has always written purely for himself.^[3] Neil Philip, in his critical study of Garner's work (1981), commented that up till that point, "Everything Alan Garner has published has been published for children",^[12] although he went on to relate that "It may be that Garner's is a case" where the division between children's and adult's literature is "meaningless" and that his fiction is instead "enjoyed by a type of person, no matter what their age."^[13]

The English author and academic Charles Butler noted that Garner was attentive to the "geological, archaeological and cultural history of his settings, and careful to integrate his fiction with the physical reality beyond the page."^[14] As a part of this, Garner had included maps of Alderley Edge in both The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath.^[15] Garner has spent much time investigating the areas that he deals with in his books; writing in the Times Literary Supplement in 1968, Garner commented that in preparation for writing his book Elidor:

I had to read extensively textbooks on physics, Celtic symbolism, unicorns, medieval watermarks, megalithic archaeology; study the writings of Jung; brush up my Plato; visit Avebury, Silbury and Coventry Cathedral; spend a lot of time with demolition gangs on slum clearance sites; and listen to the whole of Britten's War Requiem nearly every day.^[16]

Recognition and legacy[link]

The Medicine House, an Early Modern building that was moved to Blackden by Garner.

In the fiftieth anniversary edition of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, published by HarperCollins in 2010, several notable British fantasy novelists praised Garner and his work. Susan Cooper related that "The power and range of Alan Garner's astounding talent has grown with every book he's written", whilst David Almond called him one of Britain's "greatest writers" whose works "really matter".^[17] Philip Pullman, the author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, went further when he remarked that:

"Garner is indisputably the great originator, the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkien, and in many respects better than Tolkien, because deeper and more truthful... Any country except Britain would have long ago recognised his importance, and celebrated it with postage stamps and statues and street-names. But that's the way with us: our greatest prophets go unnoticed by the politicians and the owners of media empires. I salute him with the most heartfelt respect and admiration."^[18]

Another British fantasy author, Neil Gaiman, claimed that "Garner's fiction is something special" in that it was "smart and challenging, based in the here and the now, in which real English places emerged from the shadows of folklore, and in which people found themselves walking, living and battling their way through the dreams and patterns of myth."^[18] Praise also came from Nick Lake, the editorial director of HarperCollins Children's Books, who proclaimed that "Garner is, quite simply, one of the greatest and most influential writers this country has ever produced."^[19]

Awards[link]

He was appointed OBE for services to literature in the 2001 New Year's Honours list.

• 'The Owl Service' won the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal in 1968
• The Lewis Carroll Shelf Award (before 1980)^{[clarification needed]}
• Artist Patrick James Lynch won the 1987 Mother Goose Award for his illustrative work on 'A Bag of Moonshine'.
• 'The Stone Book' received the Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association (USA) in 1996
• The 1981 film 'Images' won First Prize at the Chicago International Film Festival
• Karl Edward Wagner Award (British Fantasy Award, Special Award) won in 2003
• On 20 January 2011, the University of Warwick awarded him the degree of Doctor of Letters (honoris causa).^[20]

Television and radio adaptations[link]

• The Owl Service (1969), a British TV series transmitted by Granada Television based on Garner's novel of the same name.
• Elidor was read in installments on a BBC children's radio program in the early 1970s
• Red Shift (BBC, transmitted 17 January 1978); directed by John Mackenzie; part of the BBC's Play for Today series.
• To Kill a King (1980), part of the BBC series of plays on supernatural themes, Leap in the Dark: an atmospheric story about a writer overcoming depression and writer's block. The hero's home appears to be Garner's own house.
• Garner and Don Webb adapted Elidor into a children's television series for the BBC. The series consisted of six half-hour episodes starring Damian Zuk as Roland and Suzanne Shaw as Helen^[21]

Works[link]

Novels[link]

Alan Gordon Partridge OBE (Honour Removed) is a fictional radio and television presenter portrayed by English comedian Steve Coogan and invented by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring for the BBC Radio 4 programme On The Hour. A parody of both sports commentators and chat show presenters, among others, the character has appeared in two radio series, three television series and numerous TV and radio specials, including appearances on BBC's Comic Relief, which have followed the rise and fall of his career.

Character[link]

This section relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (April 2009)

Whereas many of his personality defects are apparent in his appearances in shows such as The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, it is largely from I'm Alan Partridge onwards that his creators began to explore his personality in depth, and most of the observations that follow originated in that show.

Personality[link]

Partridge is characterised as an insecure, superficial and narcissistic 'wally', concerned largely with status, the level of his public profile and, to a lesser extent, the ostentatious possessions this allows him to acquire (such as his beloved Rover and Lexus cars and Bang & Olufsen stereo systems). Despite being a broadcaster, Partridge is a socially incompetent and awkward character prone to one-upmanship, embarrassing social faux pas and displays of deep insensitivity to social norms. His thoughtlessness and selfish lack of interest in anything beyond his own objectives exposes an unsympathetic character that is disliked and privately lampooned by many of those with whom he comes into contact. Among Partridge's few friends are Lynn Benfield, his put-upon and long-suffering personal assistant whom he regularly humiliates, and Michael, an emotionally tortured ex-soldier from Newcastle upon Tyne. It is notable, however, that he treats even these people with little more than disdain despite expecting complete loyalty from them in return; in the first series of I'm Alan Partridge he does not even seem to be on first-name terms with Michael (who exclusively addressed him as Mr Partridge throughout the two series). Bizarrely, he appears to have a close friendship with Bill Oddie, who even sends Alan Christmas presents. Partridge is otherwise depicted as being unable to forge genuine friendships or connections with other people (who are, seemingly without exception, repelled by his unpleasant and self-absorbed personality).

Attraction[link]

Partridge is depicted as being a sexually repressed and prudish man, uncomfortable and awkward with overt (or even subtle) displays of sexual or romantic feelings, or what he views as being ‘perverted’ sexual practices. He is particularly disconcerted by homosexuality, and despite describing himself as "homosceptic" at one point appears to entertain homoerotic or bisexual tendencies. This is the subject of numerous running gags in I’m Alan Partridge, in particular his numerous efforts to deny his interest in Bangkok "lady-boys" (whom he describes as ‘fascinating creatures’ whilst insisting that he is merely confused by them and not attracted to them) and a recurrent gag in which he will daydream about performing an erotic dance in a peephole Pringle jumper and a vulcanised rubber thong for a selection of men (usually those who can help further his career in some way, such as BBC Chief of Programming Tony Hayers). He is also quite misogynistic, displaying a tendency to objectify and patronise women (who usually view him with some disdain). Despite this, in the second series of I’m Alan Partridge he manages to sustain a romantic relationship with Sonja, a scatterbrained 33-year-old immigrant from Ukraine who is quite devoted to him. Even this relationship, however, is marked by Alan’s open contempt for her, and it is apparent that her affection towards him is largely unreturned and that his relationship with her is mainly based on the boost to his ego that their 14-year age gap provides (which he is frequently heard boasting about).

Family[link]

No member of Partridge’s family is shown on any of the series that he appears in; however, his dysfunctional relationship with them informs much of the background of the show. In his early appearances, Alan was married to Carol; although never-seen on screen, she can be heard in the mock documentary 'Knowing Knowing Me, Knowing You' that accompanies the BBC Radio 4 series of 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' first broadcast in 1993. Their relationship appeared to be under a lot of strain. In the Christmas special Knowing Me, Knowing Yule, Alan attributed his rash and erratic behaviour to the fact that Carol had left him on Christmas Eve. By the time of I'm Alan Partridge, Alan and Carol are divorced, and while Alan lives in a Travel Tavern, Carol remains in their home with her new boyfriend, who Alan describes unflatteringly as "a narcissistic sports pimp" who apparently enjoys protein drinks. During their marriage, Alan and Carol had two children — Fernando (apparently named after the song by ABBA) and Denise — neither of whom is ever seen or heard on-screen. During the run of Knowing Me, Knowing You, Alan states that Fernando is studying Politics at Christ's College, Cambridge. The next references to Alan's children are made in I'm Alan Partridge, in which Fernando hangs up on one of Alan's rambling go-nowhere telephone conversations, and in which a staff member at the Travel Tavern mentions that Denise has an oddly similar appearance to Alan. It is also revealed that Denise has a pierced navel, and that Fernando seems to spend much of his time in bed with a succession of girlfriends. The final mention of Alan's children is an offhand comment in the second episode of the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, in which Alan glibly states that he has access to his children, but that they have no desire to see him.

Ambitions[link]

Outside of his all-consuming quest to be on television, his various appearances often demonstrate that Partridge does not possess a particularly rich or detailed personal life. In I’m Alan Partridge in particular, he is often shown to occupy himself with pointless or needless tasks, seemingly just to give himself something to do. This is particularly evident in the first series episode "Basic Alan", over the course of which he walks to a petrol station to buy 12 bottles of windscreen washer fluid for no apparent reason, spends time driving repeatedly around a ring road and purchases a packet of tungsten-tipped screws which he states he has no intention of ever using. Most of the interests he is depicted as having show him as out of touch with modern society in general; he describes Paul McCartney's band Wings as "the band The Beatles could have been". In "Towering Alan" he claims to have a broad taste in music; he is a fan of Kate Bush, the Electric Light Orchestra, UB40, Def Leppard and particularly ABBA, the music of which is a recurrent theme in Knowing Me, Knowing You. In the second series episode "I Know What Alan Did Last Summer" he enthusiastically plays "air-bass" to the Gary Numan song "Music for Chameleons", and in "Never Say Alan Again" is seen drumming along inside his Lexus to the theme of Return of the Saint which he plays at full volume insensitively at the cemetery whilst having given his assistant Lynn ten minutes to commemorate the anniversary of her mother's passing. The few hobbies he is depicted as indulging in include driving, rambling, birdwatching and collecting celebrity memorabilia.

Political views[link]

Partridge is politically conservative, and his favourite newspaper is the Daily Mail, a right-leaning publication which he claims is "arguably the best newspaper in the world" in the episode Bravealan. He is very pro-law and has a strong stance on criminality, viewing hoodlums and miscreants as "sub-human scum". He also favours the death penalty for treason and murder. Despite these professed views, he appears to have no strong moral compunctions; in one episode he exploits an "all you can fit on a plate" breakfast deal at the Travel Tavern by bringing in a slightly larger plate of his own, a "scam" of which the staff are in fact fully aware but tolerate with amusement. Alan is not a fan of the modern obsession with health and safety, stating on one occasion that political correctness had "gone mad" after being told that naked flames are not permitted on the forecourt of his local petrol station, thus curtailing his plans for a barbecue there. He has admiration for former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and believes she was betrayed by her own party when she was forced out of Downing Street, and in 1997 claimed that the Referendum Party had "more integrity than the whole of the other political parties put together."^[1]

He has commented on the troubles in Northern Ireland stating that he believes both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to be very clever men, though that he does not trust either of them as he believes Adams looks like a deputy headmaster and McGuinness looks like a clown without make-up. He displays ignorance over the issues that unfolded in Ireland, once chastising the Irish over the potato famine with the remark, "at the end of the day, they will pay the price for being a fussy eater", and also completely misunderstanding the lyrics to Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2, believing the song to "really encasuplated the frustrations of a Sunday" (both of these conversations happened in front of two Irish television producers in To Kill A Mocking Alan). Alan once caused a security alert at Choristers Country Club by booking a room under the name "The Real IRA".

Fictional biography[link]

Early years and career[link]

Within his fictional world, Partridge was born to Dorothy Partridge on 2 April 1955 in King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, and spent his childhood in Norwich. He was often bullied at school, as we find out in an episode of the original Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge radio show when Alan is hypnotised and regressed to his childhood, and reveals he was called "Smelly Alan Fartridge" by classmate Stephen McCoombs - happily for Partridge now McCoombs has back problems and lives on disability benefits. He claims in his autobiography that this was infantile humour that any self-respecting comedian would have dismissed and that he was particularly sensitive to hygiene issues and if there were anything he did smell of, it would have been Radox and Colgate. In the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, Alan recounts a story about a time he was once caned for having a chalk penis drawn on the back of his school blazer by another student, an incident about which he still feels bitter. The same student also dropped Alan's swimming trunks into a urinal one day at school, despite Alan being his scout pack leader. He appears to have had a lonely childhood, and in a 'Rural Alan' special feature (found on the DVD release of Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge) recounts how he would ramble about the Norfolk countryside in solitude, singing his favourite pop songs.

After passing two A-levels Partridge attended the (fictional) East Anglia Polytechnic. He later married Carol, who gave birth to Alan's son Fernando and daughter Denise. Carol left Alan for a fitness instructor (whom Alan claims to be an "idiot" and a "narcissistic sports pimp"), and took the children with her.

Radio career[link]

Alan worked his way upwards from a position as a DJ on Radio Smile on St Luke's hospital radio, until he left, after arguments with patients. He then began presenting the drive time Traffic Buster show on Radio Norwich, where he stayed for five years and was named sports reporter of the year in 1988. He then became a presenter on the BBC's Scoutabout programme, where he entered into the top eight of BBC sports reporters. Alan soon garnered a slot presenting sports news on BBC Radio 4's On the Hour programme (1991) presented by Chris Morris. On that show Alan suffered from a severe lack of any sporting knowledge and developed a notable talent for mixed and/or nonsensical metaphors.

Alan got his first starring role in 1992 as host of BBC Radio 4's Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge (a spoof chat show with fictional guests). A typical question was "You've just published your autobiography. What's that about?" He managed to offend people on his show who would then attempt to disgrace the host. During his tenure on the show, Alan hit a child genius, unknowingly took cocaine, bribed rent boys, lost his wife's car in a bet, was openly homophobic, forced the resignation of a junior government minister and, in the series finale, his guest Lord Morgan of Glossop died of an apparent heart attack.

There was also a one off spoof-documentary about the show called Knowing, Knowing Me, Knowing You. It provided a behind-the-scenes look at how the show was put together and the antagonism between Alan and those who worked for him, as well as giving insight into the problems with his marriage to Carol.

[edit] The Day Today

On The Hour transferred to television as The Day Today in 1994, where Alan continued as the inept sports reporter ("This is Sports Desk... I'm Alan Partridge"). Here he bungled his way through a feature on the 1994 FIFA World Cup, gave a colourful report on the previous sporting season, made a complete mess of reporting the recent horse racing tournament, and was beaten up by a female martial-arts instructor.

[edit] Knowing Me, Knowing You

The transition to television was to be a success for Alan and was swiftly followed by a television version of Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge. The format was largely the same as the radio show, with the addition of a house band under the directorship of Glen Ponder (played by musical comedian Steve Brown). In the sixth episode, Alan accidentally shot dead one of his guests (Forbes McAllister) on air while examining one of Lord Byron's duelling pistols. He was cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal BBC investigation. The show featured an Alan Partridge tie and blazer badge set which, like the Alan Partridge face mask, was produced but never marketed - instead the famous "Tie and Blazer Badge Set" was included as part of a Boxed Set of videos released towards the end of the 1990s.

In reality, KMKYWAP was a huge success; in the fictional world of Alan Partridge, it suffered from terrible ratings. This was because of "poor scheduling" (The show was aired at the same time as the News at Ten^{[disambiguation needed ]}) and Alan's PA, Lynn, claimed that "the ratings started poorly and went downhill from there". In the end the show was taken off the air at the end of the first series.

In 1995, Alan hosted a Christmas special of KMKYWAP, humorously titled Knowing Me, Knowing Yule. One of his guests was the (fictional) director of programming at the BBC, Tony Hayers (later to become Alan's nemesis, played by David Schneider). Alan, with a characteristic lack of subtlety, was seen probing for a new series of KMKYWAP. However, the show was an unmitigated disaster for Alan, as his attempt at product placement was blatantly exposed, and the show climaxed with Alan punching both a man in a wheelchair and Tony Hayers (twice) with his hand inside a roast partridge. After punching Hayers for the first time, Partridge begged "please don't take my chat away from me", then after punching him a second time declared "I'll never work in broadcasting again". Mick Hucknall of Simply Red then played the show out. It was clearly the beginning of the end of his time at BBC television. He was "kept on the books", as it were, for a short while, but after a particularly harrowing meeting with Hayers at the BBC cafeteria (which involved assault by cheese) he was left in no doubt that his BBC TV career was over.

[edit] I'm Alan Partridge

Partridge next appeared in I'm Alan Partridge (1997), a look behind the scenes of his rapidly failing career. In this television series, he is seen having gained a slot on the fictional Radio Norwich. He continues to cause offence, this time mainly to his listeners. He also has a bad relationship with his colleague Dave Clifton (played by Phil Cornwell), Alan occasionally insults him while introducing him on his show (for example in ‘Alan Attraction’ Alan says "Here's a man who indeed won't be killing anyone with syphilis"). However Dave usually gets the better of Alan except in ‘Basic Alan’ where he tells Dave to "fuck off" after he torments him over a recent incident with a traffic cone, Dave is stunned by this and lays into Alan by claiming that "dead-air is a crime and that it is terrible that he has to fill it with swearing on his show". Alan's comeback refers to the correct time (7.01am) and that it is Dave's show and he is merely a guest whom Dave has failed to control, he then says "Read the smallprint on your cone-tract". By this stage in his life Alan had been kicked out by his wife and, after wandering around a John Menzies for five hours in a state of depressed homelessness, Alan had been forced to take up residence in the equally fictional Linton Travel Tavern, which he chose because it is "equidistant between London and Norwich". The first episode featured Alan meeting Tony Hayers, begging for a new series on the BBC. Hayers was not impressed, and Alan had to wrap up his production company Peartree Productions (a reference to the Christmas Carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas"), firing all its staff including Jill (whom he had feelings for and had one-night stand with; albeit unsuccessful). During his time at the Linton Travel Tavern, we discovered more about Alan's failed marriage, his children and his obsession with "Bangkok Chick Boys". In ‘Watership Alan’ he was crushed by a dead cow after insulting farmers on his show. And in ‘To Kill a Mocking Alan’ he was nearly kidnapped by his "number one fan", a crazed lunatic called Jed Maxwell.

In the final episode, Tony Hayers died after a fall from a roof, and one of Alan's old friends, Chris Feather, took over as head of programmes at the BBC. However, at the decisive moment when the new executive was about to sign a five-year contract, he keeled over and died, forcing Alan to forge the dead man's signature.

The programme itself is not presented as a documentary, but during the in-character commentary on the DVD release, Alan explains that it is in fact a "post-documentary"; all the events depicted in the series took place, but everyone in the show, apart from himself and his personal assistant Lynn Benfield (played by Felicity Montagu), were actors hired to portray them "after they had actually occurred".

Alan's next appearance was in a 1999 half-hour special filmed for Comic Relief in which Alan started to lose the plot, foreshadowing his mental breakdown in the second series of I'm Alan Partridge. A simulcast between BBC Two and Radio Norwich, Alan appears incoherent and incapable of keeping track of the format of his own show. A second Comic Relief appearance followed in 2001, showing him interviewing a boxing manager, played by Peter Kay. Eventually, this resulted in Alan taking on one of the boxers in the ring and being beaten by the boxer, the manager and his friend Michael.

Coogan was apparently reluctant to continue playing the character, but returned for a second series of I'm Alan Partridge in 2002.

In the second series Alan was temporarily living in a caravan while waiting for his new house to be built. Despite his five-year contract with the BBC, Alan claims to his old school teacher "Sweaty" Frank Raphael in ‘The Talented Mr. Alan’ that there was "bad blood" between them and they were "bitter bastards" plus every profession has its "shits", so they had to let him go.

Alan returned to radio, securing the "third best slot on Radio Norwich", presenting Norfolk Nights, a big leap from his former timeslot of 4am to 7am, when he presented Up With the Partridge. Alan also presents a military-based quiz show called Skirmish on the (fictional) cable station UK Conquest, and has a deal with Meteor Productions to make the Crash! Bang! Wallop!... What a Video/Scum on the Run series of car-crash videos.

In the period from his time at the Linton Travel Tavern to his residence in the temporary "static home", Alan suffered a mental breakdown and put on weight, or as he put it, was "clinically fed up" and "repellent to women for two years". This collapse culminated in Alan driving a Vauxhall Vectra to Dundee in his bare feet while gorging himself on Toblerone (in a similar incident, Alan recounts throwing all his tax receipts off a ferry). However, by 2002, his life was firmly back on track, save for the odd glitch. He even had a Ukrainian girlfriend called Sonja, who was 33 years old — 14 years younger than himself (a point Alan emphasises with the smug exclamation, "Cashback!"). This period in Alan's life is documented in his autobiography Bouncing Back, which Alan claims has been described as "lovely stuff" by entertainer Shakin' Stevens.

Memorable moments of this series include Alan dry-vomiting his way through a speech about fireplaces after impaling his foot on a spiked fence; mistakenly getting involved with swingers; attacking a six-foot stuffed Beefeater bear; his summing up the entire opening of The Spy Who Loved Me in less than a minute during a failed attempt at a 24-hour Bondathon; Lynn's baptism at her Baptist church and, of course, the sad pulping of his autobiography which, despite taking up four weeks of his life to write, simply wasn't selling well (partly because every anecdote ended with the phrase "Needless to say, I had the last laugh".) Unfortunately, Alan tells us, it seems the public was more concerned with buying gangster autobiographies like Bad Slags.

The second series saw a move away from the drier and more realistic style of the first, a move that was at odds with more recent sitcoms, most notably The Office. This led to it being less well received than the first. Surprisingly, producer and co-writer of the series, Armando Iannucci states in the commentary to his own DVD of The Armando Iannucci Shows, that he had recently re-watched the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, and describes it as "terrible". On the DVD commentary of the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan appears surprised at the over-the-top style he used to play Alan in the 2002 series, calling it "big acting".

Steve Coogan's profile on the BBC Comedy website talks of another series featuring Alan Partridge, entitled I'm Still Alan Partridge.^[2] However this was in fact the provisional title for I'm Alan Partridge series 2.

[edit] Anglian Lives

In 2003, Alan again returned to our screen in a half-hour special of Anglian Lives (also known as "Anglian Alan"), a fictional regional BBC show. This was presented by Ray Woollard (Peter Baynham, who had appeared previously in 'I'm Alan Partridge' as the voice box using executive from the boat holiday company in 'Watership Alan') and "Digital Dave", and was basically a sycophantic look at Alan's career, past and present; the credits listed it as being executively produced by Alan himself. It shed more detail on Alan's hatred of London, his Toblerone addiction, and his future.

[edit] Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters: Live

In October 2008 Alan returned as part of the tour "Steve Coogan is Alan Partridge and other less successful characters". Alan is now a life coach and claims to have helped such celebrities as Ross Kemp, Vinnie Jones, Jeremy Kyle, and the Cheeky Girls. Also, in a recent interview, Coogan confirmed that Partridge would return at some stage, for either a film or a Television special.^[3]

Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge[link]

In August 2010, it was reported that Alan Partridge would make a comeback series online for lager giant Fosters.^[4] On 8 October 2010, it was announced that the new show, entitled Alan Partridge's Mid Morning Matters, would premiere on 5 November 2010 on Foster's comedy site, http://www.fostersfunny.co.uk . In a press release, Steve Coogan announced, in character:

"I am delighted to announce that after years as a regional broadcaster on North Norfolk Digital my groundbreaking radio segment, Mid Morning Matters, will now be accessible to a potential audience of billions via the World Wide Web (www).

That it has taken Foster’s to help realise my dream of joining the information superhighway is a damning indictment of the established broadcasters whose shabby treatment of me on Sept 10th 2001 was frankly shabby. I made dozens of calls the next day, all of which were ignored.

My appreciation must go to Armando Iannucci and Baby Cow for ignoring the lies, God bless them. In the meantime I look forward to “hanging out ‘n’ chillin” with the MySpace generation."^[5]

After the six episodes aired online, in December 2010, Armando Iannucci confirmed on Twitter that "there will be 6 more Alan Partridge Mid Morning Matters starting in February." This series started on February 4, 2011, as episode 7, and ran every Friday until episode 12 on March 11, 2011.

In Mid Morning Matters Alan again works as a disc jockey, this time on the fictional station 'North Norfolk Digital'. He is occasionally joined by 'Side-kick Simon', played by Tim Key, who after Episode 10 is fired due to Alan's gradual dislike towards him. Alan is noticeably annoyed when he discovers that Simon had started guesting as a side-kick on another radio show (a late night comedy show). Much of the comedy surrounding Simon was his failure to grasp political correctness on sensitive issues which Alan would have to cover for when Simon slipped. After his departure Alan recruits a new side-kick, 'Zoe' and quickly develops a crush on her. In the twelfth and final episode of Mid Morning Matters, Zoe reveals she is going travelling for three months much to Alan's disappointment. The episode ends with a shot through the window into the recording booth as Zoe hugs Alan and gives him a kiss on the cheek; there is no sound and it is unknown what Alan has said to warrant this reaction. This is a rare low key ending to an Alan Partridge series with the high point culminating in Episode 10 when Alan scolds Side-kick Simon following a practical joke on Alan.

In Episode 3, released on 18 November 2010, Alan invites listeners to vote for "simply the best of Norfolk" (who is the best person Norfolk has produced?) in which he makes reference to Bernard Matthews ("he is tantalisingly close to producing the ten-pence turkey, now there's a thought..."). Matthews died a week later on 25 November 2010.

Following the series, Alan appeared again as part of the Red Nose Day 2011 set for a one-off show akin to the Mid Morning Matters arrangement, and here Side-kick Simon reappears in his former capacity. Here, Alan interviews a nun over whom he sneezes blood by mistake. The series was written by Steve Coogan, Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons and Armando Iannucci.

On 4 October 2011 co-writer Neil Gibbons announced on his Twitter feed that a second series of Mid Morning Matters was in development.^[6] On 10 November 2011 it was reported that the rights to the current and future series of Mid Morning Matters were to be acquired by Sky to be shown on subscriber-only channel Sky Atlantic.^[7]

[edit] I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan

On 22 July 2011, Armando Iannucci announced on his Twitter feed that "Alan Partridge [had] delivered his autobiography to the publishers".^[8] The book was published in the UK by HarperCollins on 29 September 2011, and is entitled I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan. It is available in hardcover and paperback, as well as in CD and downloadable audio and ePub formats, and is also set to be published in Australia on 1 November 2011 and in Canada on 1 December 2011.^[9] Alan Partridge promoted his autobiography on ITV's The Jonathan Ross Show show on 1 October 2011.^[10] It was met with positive reviews and was a commercial success, compared to his fictional last book 'Bouncing Back' which was panned by critics and didn't sell well.^[11][12][13]

The Alan Partridge Movie[link]

In August 2004 a small piece appeared in the Metro newspaper which claimed that: "Steve Coogan got the green light from a US studio to play the spoof DJ on the big screen." Coogan reportedly said: "It's always been my plan to make Alan go global. It's what he lives for really, not just doing the show on Radio Norwich." Other sources confirm the film will be going ahead and ITV has reported that Victoria Beckham will be playing a "demanding diva" in the film. Coogan has since denied that Beckham will appear.

In April 2005, Coogan's production firm Baby Cow announced that an Alan Partridge movie was in the pipeline.^[14][15] It was later revealed the film would involve an al-Qaeda siege. Due to the sensitivities of such a storyline after the 7 July 2005 London bombings, the project was put on hold,^[16] but in November 2007, further details of the film were released.^[17]

The plot of the film involved Alan Partridge attempting another comeback from local radio, only to have his ambitions thwarted when Middle Eastern terrorists hijack the BBC offices. Coogan had written some dialogue, but has said he is not sure whether he wants to revisit his most famous creation. "Part of me wants to do it, and other things," he said in an interview.^[18] Playwright Patrick Marber, whose early collaborations with Coogan included The Day Today and being the principal writer of both radio and TV versions of Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge, has also been working on the script, but the pair put their plans on hold following the London bombings, for fear the screenplay would appear in bad taste. Actress Felicity Montagu, who plays Partridge's PA Lynne, said last year^[when?]: "There was a lot of talk about it, but then the London bombings happened and it got put to one side. I'm sure Steve will write an Alan Partridge film eventually. But for the moment I don't think it's happening."^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, Armando Iannucci, who helped Coogan create Partridge, said he did not want to be involved in any movie spin-off, saying: "Steve wants to do an Alan Partridge film, but I couldn't bear to go through that again. For me, the idea of spending two more years in a room with that voice is more than I can take". However, in more recent interviews, Iannucci has been more positive about the idea and it is expected that both he and Peter Baynham will be involved in writing the film.

Armando Iannucci revealed in late March 2010 that Alan won’t be travelling to the USA as the rumours have suggested though: “At the moment we’re just deciding whether we should (make an Alan Partridge movie) and the ideas we’ve come up with are very much Alan in the UK and his ideas of what he could be. We don’t see Alan, for example getting Simon Cowell’s spot on American Idol and going over there. That’s too good for Alan. Alan’s future is always brighter in his head than it is in the real world. I think Alan harbours this distortion that, with reality TV bringing back your Keith Chegwins and your Tony Blackburns and so on that his time will come, but it hasn’t come, he hasn’t had that call.” ^[19]

Armando Iannucci confirmed in July 2010 that a film is definitely in the works and that Steve and himself have "now agreed a story for the film. It's NOT Alan goes to America." ^[20]

In November 2011 Peter Baynham said that the movie is happening next year.^[21]

The movie's screenplay is currently being written by Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Rob Gibbons and Neil Gibbons - plus Peter Baynham - with the storyline completed in January 2012. ^[22]

In spring 2012, Armando Iannucci stated that the as-yet-untitled film would be shooting later in the year, released in 2013, and would be directed by Declan Lowney.^[23]

Other activity[link]

In 2004 Coogan also gave an interview with Now magazine, and when asked "Is it true that you're killing off Alan Partridge?", Coogan replied: "No, not at all. What's he up to at the moment? Well, I'd say he's being cryogenically preserved next to Walt Disney. Don't worry. When the day comes that I feel like I need to do something else with him, I'll defrost him and make him funny again."

In November 2008, Coogan stated that he has some ideas for what to do with Partridge next on TV and that he's glad to be well known for playing him, despite it over-shadowing most of his other ventures. "As a character he's given me the opportunity to play lots of other characters and to have other opportunities in film and television. So I can't resent him really. And I enjoy playing him, performing him because it's very comfortable. It's like putting on an old jacket".^[24]

List of appearances[link]

• On the Hour (BBC Radio 4, series) 1991
• On the Hour (BBC Radio 4, series) 1992
• Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge (BBC Radio 4, series) 1992
• Knowing, Knowing Me, Knowing You (BBC Radio 4, spoof documentary) 1992
• The Day Today (BBC Two, spoof news series) 1994
• Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge (BBC Two) 1994
• A Christmas Ramble (BBC Two, spoof documentary) 1994
• Comic Relief (BBC One, with John Thomson) 1995
• Knowing Me Knowing Yule with Alan Partridge (BBC Two, Christmas special) 1995
• The Big Snog (Live show in support of gay rights) 1996
• I'm Alan Partridge (BBC Two, series) 1997
• Clive Anderson: All Talk (BBC One, spoof interview) 1997
• Election Night Armistice (BBC Two, political satire show) 1997
• Brit Awards (ITV, presenting award for Best Video to the 'not unattractive' All Saints) 1998
• Steve Coogan Live: The Man Who Thinks He's It (Live show) 1998
• Stephen Fry's "Live from the Lighthouse" (Channel 4, spoof interview with Simon Pegg as an AIDS charity worker and Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher) 1998
• Comic Relief (BBC Two, half-hour special featuring Bryan Ferry; Partridge sings a Kate Bush medley) 1999
• Comedy Awards (performing a duet with Elton John) 2000
• Comic Relief (BBC One, featuring Peter Kay) 2001
• I'm Alan Partridge (BBC Two, series) 2002
• Anglian Lives (BBC Two, spoof career retrospective - also featuring Peter Baynham) 2003
• Cream of British Comedy (Live Show, as well as the live show a DVD was released includes Radio Norwich extras such as Alan meets Roger Daltrey) 2005
• Comic Relief (BBC One, monologue; KMKY-style (fictional) interview featuring Simon Pegg as the Milky Bar Kid) 2005
• Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters: Live (Live tour, Alan was a featured character in Coogan's 2008 live tour, where he has become a life coach) 2008
• Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge (Foster's Funny/Sky Atlantic, New Alan Partridge web/TV series) 2010-present
• Comic Relief Mid Morning Matters (BBC One, Comic Relief Special of Mid Morning Matters) 2011
• The Jonathan Ross Show (ITV1, Spoof Interview with Jonathan Ross promoting his autobiography) 2011
• The Richard Bacon Show (BBC Radio 5Live, Spoof Interview with Richard Bacon promoting his autobiography) 2011
• Under 1 Roof (Charity show appearance) 2011

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alan Partridge

• Alan Partridge at BBC Online
• British Sitcom Guide

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (June 2010)

Alan Parsons
Alan Parsons in 2006
Background information
Born	(1948-12-20) 20 December 1948 (age 63) London, England
Genres	Rock, progressive rock
Occupations	Audio engineer, composer, musician, record producer, director
Years active	1967–present
Labels	Legacy, Arista, Fox, Mercury, Frontiers[citation needed]
Associated acts	The Alan Parsons Project
Website	Alan Parsons Music

Alan Parsons (born 20 December 1948^[1]) is a British audio engineer, musician, and record producer. He was involved with the production of several significant albums, including The Beatles' Abbey Road and Let It Be, as well as Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon for which Pink Floyd credit him as an important contributor. Parsons' own group, The Alan Parsons Project, as well as his subsequent solo recordings, have also been successful commercially.

Career[link]

In October 1967, at age 18, Parsons went to work as an assistant engineer at Abbey Road Studios, where he earned his first credit on the LP Abbey Road. He became a regular there, engineering such projects as Paul McCartney's Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway, five albums by The Hollies, and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, for which he received his first Grammy Award nomination. He was known for doing more than what would normally be considered the scope of a recording engineer’s duties.^{[citation needed]}He considered himself to be a recording director, likening his contribution to recordings to what Stanley Kubrick contributed to film.^{[citation needed]} This is apparent in his work with Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat", where Parsons added the saxophone part and transformed the original folk concept into the jazz-influenced ballad that put Al Stewart onto the charts.^{[citation needed]} It is also heard in Parsons' influence on the Hollies' "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" and "The Air That I Breathe", sharp departures from their popular 1960s hits "Stay", "Just One Look", "Stop! Stop! Stop!" or "Bus Stop".^{[citation needed]} Parsons was also known to have swapped shifts during the engineering of The Dark Side of the Moon so he could work entirely on the project.^{[citation needed]}

Parsons also produced three albums by Pilot, a Scottish pop rock band consisting of Ian Bairnson on guitar, Stuart Tosh on drums, and David Paton on lead vocals, guitars,bass and William (Billy) Lyall, on piano and keys. Their hits included "January" and "Magic".

He also mixed the debut album by the American band Ambrosia and produced their second album Somewhere I've Never Travelled. Alan was nominated for grammys for both of these albums. ^[2]

In 1975, he declined Pink Floyd's invitation to come back and work on the follow-up for "Dark Side," Wish You Were Here, and instead initiated The Alan Parsons Project with producer and songwriter (and occasional singer) Eric Woolfson, whom he had met at Abbey Road. The Project consisted of a revolving group of studio musicians and vocalists, most notably the members of Pilot and (on the first album) the members of Ambrosia. Unlike most rock groups, The Alan Parsons Project never performed live during its heyday, although it did release several music videos. Its only live performance during its original incarnation was in 1990, with Woolfson present but behind the scenes. After releasing ten albums, the last in 1987, the Project terminated in 1990 after Parsons and Woolfson split, with the Project's intended 11th album released that year as a Woolfson solo album. Parsons continued to release work in his own name and in collaboration with other musicians. Parsons and his band now regularly tour many parts of the world.

Although an accomplished vocalist, keyboardist, bassist, guitarist and flautist, Parsons only sang infrequent and incidental parts on his albums. While his keyboard playing was very audible on the Alan Parsons Project albums, very few recordings feature his flute. During the late 1990s, Parsons' career travelled an interesting full circle. Having started out in the music industry at the Abbey Road Studios in London as an assistant engineer in the late 1960s, he briefly returned to run the studio in its entirety. He reportedly managed to combine this role with the demands of a hectic performing and recording schedule. Parsons also continued with his selective production work for other bands.

Of all his collaborations, guitarist Ian Bairnson worked with Parsons the longest, including Parsons' post-Woolfson albums, Try Anything Once, On Air, and The Time Machine.

As well as receiving gold and platinum awards from many nations, Parsons has received ten Grammy Award nominations for engineering and production. In 2007 he received a nomination for Best Surround Sound Album for A Valid Path.

In May 2005, Parsons appeared at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, California, to mix front-of-house sound for Southern California-based Pink Floyd tribute band Which One’s Pink? and their performance of The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety.^[3]

Since 2003 he has toured under a revised name, The Alan Parsons Live Project (with Woolfson’s permission). The globe-trotting band features guitarist Godfrey Townsend, drummer Steve Murphy, keyboardist Manny Focarazzo, and bass guitarist John Montagna. The 2004–2005 shows offered vocalist P. J. Olsson's track "More Lost Without You", while the later 2006 shows presented The Crystal Method-featured "We Play the Game" and opened with "Return to Tunguska" along with successes spanning the Project years.

Beginning in 2001 and extending for four years, Parsons conceived and led a Beatles tribute show called A Walk Down Abbey Road featuring a group of headlining performers such as Todd Rundgren, Ann Wilson of Heart, John Entwistle of The Who, and Jack Bruce of Cream. The show structure included a first set where all musicians assembled to perform each others' hits, and a second set featuring all Beatles songs.

In 2010, Alan Parsons released his single "All Our Yesterdays" through Authentik Artists.^[4] Parsons also launched a DVD educational series in 2010 titled The Art and Science of Sound Recording ("ASSR") on music production and the complete audio recording process. The single "All Our Yesterdays" was written and recorded during the making of ASSR. The series, narrated by Billy Bob Thornton,^[5] gives detailed tutorials on virtually every aspect of the sound recording process. Individual sections of the series are also being released in batches and are available to stream or download at www.artandscienceofsound.com.^[5]

During 2010, several media reports,^[6][7] one of which included a quote from a representative of Parsons,^[8] alleged that the song "Need You Now" by country music group Lady Antebellum possessed the melody and arrangement of "Eye in the Sky."

In 2011 it was announced that Parsons was creating and producing a new group called the Subclones. Parsons said: "I feel that the public deserves some genuinely innovative music and It's been a long time since I've heard some that truly excites me – it made me want to get back into the studio and do another 'Dark Side'." Parsons jokingly refers to one of the biggest-selling and most popular albums in history.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life[link]

Parsons was born in London. He resides in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and her two daughters, as well as numerous pets.^[1]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

• with The Alan Parsons Project:
  • Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976)
  • I Robot (1977)
  • Pyramid (1978)
  • Eve (1979)
  • The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980)
  • Eye in the Sky (1982)
  • Ammonia Avenue (1984)
  • Vulture Culture (1985)
  • Stereotomy (1985)
  • Gaudi (1987)
• as a solo artist:
  • Try Anything Once (1993)
  • On Air (1996)
  • The Time Machine (1999)
  • A Valid Path (2004)

Full discography[link]