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.)
Fracked: Or Please Don't Use The F Word (2016)

Translations and adaptations

Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector (from Russian) produced at the Chichester Festival Theatre, directed by Martin Duncan and starring Alistair McGowan
Gogol's The Nose (based on the Gogol short story of the same name)
La Vie parisienne (operetta by Jacques Offenbach, translated from French)
Die Fledermaus (from German)
The Arsonists (a 2007 translation of the 1953 play Biedermann und die Brandstifter by Max Frisch)

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, 29 March 2004) (about the war in Iraq and its treatment in Follow My Leader)
"Lunatics in the White House? Surely not?" (Camden New Journal, 19 November 2004) (about the genesis of A Planet for the President; includes author photograph).

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