Alan Davies

Alan Davies

Alan Davies is a stand-up comedian, writer and actor best known for playing the title role in Jonathan Creek and as a permanent panellist on QI.

Alan Davies began performing stand-up comedy in 1988 at the Whitstable Labour Club and was named Time Out's Best Young Comic in 1991. He continued touring and performing in the UK and Australia, winning the Edinburgh Festival Critics Award for Comedy in 1994. In 1994 and 1995 he hosted Alan's Big One for three series on Radio 1 before appearing in Channel 4's spoof travel show One for the Road. Alan played the title role in Jonathan Creek between 1997 and 2004. The character worked as a creative consultant to a stage magician while also solving seemingly supernatural mysteries through his talent for logical deduction and understanding of illusions. The show won a BAFTA for Best Drama and brought Davies to mainstream attention. Davies co-wrote and starred in his own radio sitcom, The Alan Davies Show, in 1998, playing himself as a struggling actor. His best friends in the show were played by Ronni Ancona and Alan Francis. Alan is also the permanent panellist on the BBC Two quiz game QI, which is hosted by Stephen Fry. He also contributed to the QI book The Book of General Ignorance, writing just four words: "Will this do, Stephen?". Alan's interaction with the host of QI, Stephen Fry, forms the comedic backbone of the show and is largely the reason for its popularity. On 16 May 2010 Davies appeared in the ITV detective series Lewis, as Marcus Richard, the quizmaster at a competition held in an Oxford college, at which some of the contestants are murdered. In September 2010 he began a three part documentary series Alan Davies' Teenage Revolution (Channel 4), partly based on his autobiographical book My Favourite People and Me, 1978-88. A DVD of Davies's stand up has been released entitled Urban Trauma. A version of that show, which ran in the West End at the Duchess Theatre and toured the UK and United States, was shown on BBC1 in 1998. He is also known for his role in the Abbey National adverts. In 2012, following a break from stand-up that lasted a decade his acute brand of surreal observational story-telling made a comeback with a live tour called "Life is Pain". Since 2014, he has hosted The Dog Rescuers for Channel 5 and chat show Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled for Dave.