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, Scotland, 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).