Alistair Beaton

Alistair Beaton (born 1947) is a Scottish left wing political satirist, journalist, radio presenter, novelist and television writer. At one point in his career he was also a speechwriter for Gordon Brown.

Born in Glasgow, Beaton was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh, Moscow and Bochum and graduated from the University of Edinburgh with First Class Honours in Russian and German. He lives in Holloway, London.

Works

Non-fiction

• The Little Book of Complete Bollocks (1999)
• The Little Book of New Labour Bollocks (2000)
• The Little Book of Management Bollocks (2001)

Fiction

• Don Juan on the Rocks (novel, 1994)
• Drop the Dead Donkey 2000 (novel, 1994) (co-authored with Andy Hamilton, after the British sitcom Drop the Dead Donkey)
• A Planet for the President (novel, 2004)

Stage plays

• The Ratepayer's Iolanthe (co-written with Ned Sherrin) (1984)
• The Metropolitan Mikado (also co-written with Sherrin) (1985)
• Feelgood (2001) (a satire on New Labour spin doctors)
• Follow My Leader (a 2004 play with music by Richard Blackford)
• King of Hearts (a satire) (2007)
• Caledonia (2010) (A satire about the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Scottish colonial ambitions (Darien scheme of the late 17th century.)

Translations and adaptations

• Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector (from Russian)
• Gogol's The Nose (based on the Gogol short story of the same name)
• La Vie Parisienne (from French)
• Die Fledermaus (from German)
• The Arsonists (a 2007 translation of the 1953 play by Max Frisch play Biedermann und die Brandstifter)

Television

• Not The Nine O'Clock News (1979-1982)
• It'll All Be Over in Half an Hour (1983)
• Spitting Image (1984-1996)
• Incident on the Line and The Way, the Truth, the Video (from Tickets for the Titanic, 1987)
• Downwardly Mobile (1994)
• Mit fünfzig küssen Männer anders (screenplay, 1998; based on a novel by Dorit Zinn)
• A Very Social Secretary (2005) (about David Blunkett's affair with Kimberly Quinn)
• The Trial of Tony Blair (2007)

Radio

• Fourth Column, a BBC Radio 4 show for writers and journalists
• Electric Ink, BBC Radio 4 (2009)
• The Beaton Generation

Miscellaneous

• Additional lyrics for the song Small Titles And Orders in the Chichester Festival Theatre's production of The Gondoliers in the summer of 2003.

External links

• Alistair Beaton's Official Website
• Alistair Beaton: "Nanny Doesn't Know Best" (The Times, March 29, 2004) (about the war in Iraq and its treatment in Follow My Leader)
• "Lunatics in the White House? Surely not?" (Camden New Journal, November 19, 2004) (about the genesis of A Planet for the President; includes author photograph).