Alistair Beaton

Alistair Beaton (born 1947) is a playwright and 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 London.

Works

Non-fiction

• The Thatcher Papers (1980)
• The Little Book of Complete Bollocks (1999)
• The Little Book of New Labour Bollocks (2000)
• The Little Book of Management Bollocks (2001)
• The Little Book of Brexit Bollocks (2019)

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 Ratepayers' Iolanthe (co-written with Ned Sherrin) South Bank and Phoenix Theatre West End (1984)
• The Metropolitan Mikado (co-written with Ned Sherrin) South Bank (1985)
• King the Musical (lyrics, co-written with Maya Angelou) Piccadilly Theatre West End (1985)
• Feelgood (a satire on New Labour spin doctors) Hampstead Theatre and Garrick Theatre West End (2001)
• Follow My Leader (a musical about the Iraq War, music by Richard Blackford) Birmingham Repertory Theatre and Hampstead Theatre (2004)
• King of Hearts (a satire on the monarchy) Hampstead Theatre (2007)
• Caledonia (a musical satire about the Royal Bank of Scotland and the 17th century Darien Scheme) King's Theatre Edinburgh International Festival (2010)
• Fracked: Or Please Don't Use The F Word (a climate change play) Chichester Festival Theatre and National Tour (2016/2017)
• The Accidental Leader Arts Theatre West End (2016)
• Alone in Berlin Royal & Derngate and York Theatre Royal (2020)
• Kardinalfehler / Cardinal Error, a satirical comedy about the Catholic Church, currently in rep (2023) at Theater Trier, Germany. Nation-wide tour of Germany scheduled for 2025

Translations and adaptations

• Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector (translated from the Russian) produced at the Chichester Festival Theatre, 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 the German)
• The Arsonists (a 2007 version of the 1953 play Biedermann und die Brandstifter by Max Frisch)
• The Caucasian Chalk Circle (a 2010 translation of the play of the same name by Bertolt Brecht)
• The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (a 2013 version of the Bertolt Brecht play, Chichester Festival Theatre and Duchess Theatre, West End)

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 (from Tickets for the Titanic, 1987)
• The Way, the Truth, the Video (from Tickets for the Titanic, 1987)
• Downwardly Mobile (1994)
• At Fifty Men Kiss Differently [de] (screenplay, 1998; based on a novel by Dorit Zinn [de])
• A Very Social Secretary (2005)
• The Trial of Tony Blair (2007)

Radio

• Fourth Column, a BBC Radio 4 show for writers and journalists
• Electric Ink, BBC Radio 4 starring Robert Lindsay (2009/2010)
• The Beaton Generation

Miscellaneous

• Consultant to Columbia TriStar Pictures 1991-1995
• Additional lyrics for the song "Small Titles And Orders" in the Chichester Festival Theatre's production of The Gondoliers in the summer of 2003.
• Consultant to stage musical Himmel und Kölle, Volksbühne, Cologne 2020/2021

External links

• 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).