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This article is about the actor. For the hockey player/coach/executive, see Keith Allen (ice hockey). For the New Zealand politician see Keith Reading Allen

Keith Philip George Allen (born 2 June 1953) is a Welsh-born English comedian, actor, singer and writer.

TV and film career

He appeared in a number of films made by The Comic Strip Presents... (notably The Bullshitters, a parody of The Professionals) on Channel 4 in the early 1980s after becoming one of the breakthrough acts of the Comedy Store in 1979. The brother of comedian and film director Kevin Allen, Keith Allen has done both straight and comedy acting, once playing Brian Dennehy.

During the brief period of BSB as an alternative satellite broadcaster to Sky, he had a regular comedy show of his own I Love Keith Allen on the Galaxy channel, a mix of stand-up and sketches.

He appeared in the black comedy, Twin Town, the Channel 4 adaptation of A Very British Coup and played the lodger who dies at the beginning of Danny Boyle's thriller Shallow Grave (1994). In the same year, he turned in a critically acclaimed performance in a BBC adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit. He was used again by Boyle to play a drug dealer in Trainspotting (1996). He also appeared disguised as a fictional hip-hop star 'Keithski' to present Top of the Pops on 19th July 1996.

He also appeared in the hard-hitting hospital drama, Bodies, as Dr. Tony Whitman. In 2005 he appeared in the Endemol-produced BBC2 television programme Art School alongside Ulrika Jonsson, John Humphrys and Clarissa Dickson Wright where he discovered a passion for painting. In 2006-2007, Allen co-starred in the BBC's Robin Hood drama series, as the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Allen has appeared in a Series 10 episode of Top Gear as the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car."

TV presenter

He presented TV documentaries for Victor Lewis-Smith's Associated-Rediffusion Television Productions: Little Lady Fauntleroy (2004), You're Fayed (2005) and on Michael Carroll - King of Chavs (2006). In 2007 his documentary Tourette De France appeared on Channel Four, in which he travelled with a group of Scottish people with Tourette syndrome on a Routemaster bus from London to the Parisian hospital where this condition was described by Georges Gilles de la Tourette in 1884.

His most recent documentary, Keith Allen Will Burn In Hell, appeared on Channel Four in June 2007, and showed Allen profiling the controversial Westboro Baptist Church, led by Fred Phelps, and speaking to various members of the church and Phelps' family. Allen made no secret of his opposition to the Church's anti-homosexuality views, and repeatedly called a member of the Phelps family a fool, and labelled certain punishing passages of the Bible, "utterly, utterly fucking vile." He additionally referred to a member of the Church as a "redneck". The same church and family were filmed as part of a Louis Theroux documentary just a matter of months earlier.

Allen presented the Manchester Passion, a contemporary retelling of the last few hours in the life of Jesus on Good Friday, April 14, 2006.

Music

He was a member of Fat Les, a band which also contained Britpop artists Damien Hirst and Blur bassist Alex James. Allen was also closely associated with the band New Order. He co-wrote their only UK number one single, World In Motion, and occasionally performed with them live. He also appeared in the band's DVD New Order Story, where he played the host to a fictional New Order game show. He has also been involved in several other football-related records, including England's Irie by Black Grape and Vindaloo by his own group, Fat Les. He also contributed the song On Me Head, Son to the film Mike Bassett: England Manager, credited on the soundtrack album to Sporting Les. He also once danced onstage with the Happy Mondays in New York City.

"Vindaloo" sounded a little too much like a "hooligan's anthem" for some observers, but from the point of view of the BBC who commissioned the official UK Music Chart, the band were deliberately walking the ghost of the incident a few years earlier on the BBC's arts & culture programme The Late Show when Keith Allen as a guest on the show got into an extremely heated row with the panel over his view that comedy was now being hamstrung to appease rules of political correctness. Just before storming off the live broadcast, Allen - a veteran of the early 1980s wave of UK "alternative" comedians that had shocked many - had stormed at an Asian member of the panel that was for tighter controls that "It's not a chip you've got on your shoulder, it's a fucking vindaloo!" Allen later explained to press reporters that a vindaloo is as faux ethnic (this piece of Indian cuisine actually originated from Portugal) as those who masquerade as self-appointed spokespeople for ethnic minority communities' rights in order to censor arts and culture according to their own pet prejudices.

Football

Although born in Swansea, Allen is a fan of Fulham F.C., the oldest professional football club in London. He has produced a number of official songs for the club with his band Colin and the Cottagers singing with the club's chairman, and owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al Fayed. These include We're Not Real Madrid and Back Home, a reference to the club's return in 2004 to its historic home Craven Cottage on the banks of the River Thames.

Personal life

Allen was born in Gorseinon, near Swansea, Wales, the son of Edward Charles Owen, a petty officer in the Royal Navy. Allen lived for most of his childhood in Gosport while his father served in Portsmouth. On the BBC's Top Gear on 9 Dec 07, he said claims he had 8 children were not true, and that he actually has six children by four different women. These include pop singer Lily Allen, actor Alfie Owen-Allen and their sister Sarah Allen with his ex-wife Alison Owen. He was also married to Nira Park and had an affair with Julia Sawalha. He now lives with actress Tamzin Malleson. Their daughter, Teddie, was born in 2006.

Books

• Allen, Keith (June 2007). Grow Up. Ebury Press. ISBN 9780091910709.

References

1. List of Presenters for Top of the Pops; bbc.co.uk; Accessed September 7, 2007.
2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/portal/2007/05/19/nosplit/ftdett119.xml
3. "I can't stand actors, The Observer, Sunday August 21, 2005"
4. Johnson, Sarah; "Actor chooses home birth shock horror"; Birth Wisdom; December 6, 2006.

External links

• Keith Allen at IMDb
• Guardian Unlimited profile

• 1953 births
• Living people
• People from Swansea
• Welsh film actors
• Welsh comedians
• Welsh television actors
• The Comic Strip
• Welsh atheists