Times Obit

Elkan Allan
December 8, 1922 - June 25, 2006
Journalist and broadcaster who created Ready, Steady, Go! and TV listings and turned a passion for gambling into an income

A KEY figure in British televison production, Elkan Allan was also one of the most innovative journalists of his era. The original producer of the groundbreaking pop show Ready, Steady, Go!, which ran from 1963 to 1966, he was known in the press as “The Man Who Switched On Britain.”
For more than 30 years he was one of the best-known journalists on The Times and The Sunday Times, and he was credited with inventing the idea of television listings pages. Until 1971 newspapers did not offer readers any critical assessment of forthcoming programming. Allan persuaded his Editor and friend Harold Evans to devote the entire back page of The Sunday Times to Elkan Allan’s TV Week Ahead. Within weeks most national papers had copied the idea. At the same time Allan invented a ratings guide for films on TV — three ticks for “Unmissable” and an X for “Give it a miss”.

Ten years later he published his own weekly cinema and TV magazine, Video Viewer, which listed all films shown on TV. Despite huge opposition, particularly from ITV, it broke the monopoly of the Radio Times and TV Times and paved the way for future weekly guides.

As a journalist he was a brilliant observer of media trends. His prose was hard-hitting and provocative, particularly about television, but he also wrote entertainingly about travel, politics and his own passions, bridge and poker.

His knowledge of cinema was second to none (he was an honorary member of Bafta) and he conducted in-depth interviews for The Times with leading actors such as Richard Burton and Orson Welles, the latter being something of a hero to him. The film journalist John Hazelton once remarked: “You can see the Citizen Kane in Elkan.”

Widely respected, though not always liked, Allan was a hard taskmaster who did not suffer fools. He could be waspish but also amusing, difficult but also generous in spirit. He taught many journalists their trade and was an inspiration to young TV producers. In appearance he seemed old fashioned, yet his ideas were revolutionary. He anticipated the birth of the video boom and the use of the internet in publishing, as well as digital television.

Elkan Phillip Allan was born in 1922 in Cricklewood, London, the son of Rose and Allan Cohen. (They changed their name to Allan in the 1930s.) Educated at the Quinto School he was exempt from National Service during the Second World War on medical grounds.

He began his career at 18 as an assistant editor on The Outfitter, and in 1942 became a reporter on The Daily Express, under Arthur Christiansen. “Christiansen was a great influence on me,” he recalled. “He taught me the basics of good journalism.” In 1945 he joined Picture Post covering the General Election.

In the late 1940s Allan began to move into broadcasting and eventually television. He wrote general knowledge questions for radio shows such as Quiz Time and Quiz Team, and in 1953 became a presenter for BBC’s Armchair Traveller.

He joined the newly formed Associated-Rediffusion, working as editor of the current affairs programme, This Week, and by 1962 had become Head of Light Entertainment, responsible for high-rating shows such as Hughie Green’s Double Your Money and Michael Miles’s Take Your Pick.

“The Weekend Starts Here!” was the slogan of Ready, Steady, Go! which Allan launched in 1963, the weekly pop show that opened to the sound of Manfred Mann’s 5-4-3-2-1.

Aired early on Friday evenings, and presented by Keith Fordyce and Cathy McGowan, the show gave many British teenagers their first glimpses of acts such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and Little Richard.

Technically advanced for its era RSG! boasted many unknown names as well, and Allan was credited with discovering Donovan who had sent him a demo tape. In 1965 Allan hit the headlines when he banned miming on the show.

He axed RSG! at the height of its popularity, but even today it is regarded as a milestone in pop history.

During the Sixties Allan wrote and produced two films, Freedom Road (1961), which won three prizes at the Berlin Television Festival, and Love in Our Time (1968), a candid documentary about sexual behaviour in Britain, and one of the first to feature people talking openly about homosexuality. He wrote several scripts for the American TV series Batman, starring Adam West.

Throughout the 1970s Allan was Britain’s best-known television journalist, courting controversy with programme makers, but championing new ideas and directors. A huge fan of the US soap Dallas, he did much to publicise the show when it was first aired in Britain.

Anticipating the video revolution, his magazine Video Viewer was the first of its kind to analyse video technology and films. Contributors included Ted Willis and Ken Hoare, the comedian Stanley Baxter’s award-winning scriptwriter.

In 1986 he was invited by Andreas Whittam Smith to join the newly launched Independent newspaper as listings editor. Later he moved to Los Angeles for four years as Hollywood correspondent for The Mail on Sunday. He also wrote for Variety and contributed scripts for A&E’s series American Justice.

He wrote several books with his second wife Angie, including The Sunday Times Guide to Movies on Television (1973, revised 1980), The Virgin Video Guide (1983) and A Guide to World Cinema (1985).

Allan was a life-long gambler — he went to his first race meeting at the age of 5 and placed his first political bet with Ian Mikardo MP, who ran a flourishing book on parliamentary divisions. Allan spent his later years watching new films, writing about online poker, and playing weekly bridge with such friends as Victoria Coren in London. He was a consultant to online bookmakers and gambling sites.

Asked, often, to name his favourite and least favourite films, he would reply: “Citizen Kane — Heaven. Charlie Drake in Sands of the Desert — Hell on earth.”

He married, in 1947, Dorotheen Ingham, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. The marriage was dissolved, and in 1969 he married Angie Willment, who survives him with their son and daughter and the children of his first marriage.



Elkan Allan, television producer and journalist, was born on December 8, 1922. He died on June 25, 2006, aged 83.

Independent Obit

Elkan Allan
Journalist/television producer who invented 'listings' at 'The Independent' and 'The Sunday Times'

Published: 29 June 2006
Elkan Philip Cohen (Elkan Allan), television producer and journalist: born London 8 December 1922; married 1947 Dorotheen Ingham (two sons, one daughter; marriage dissolved), 1969 Angie Willment (one son, one daughter); died London 25 June 2006.

Elkan Allan was an extraordinary mixture of journalist, television producer, entrepreneur and innovator. In a career that continued for over 60 years he made his name and his reputation by constantly looking ahead and sideways, not just at what was being done at any given time, but at what could be done next.

He was born in 1922, in Cricklewood, north-west London, the son of Rose and Allan Cohen (the Cohens changed their name to Allan in the 1930s), and educated at the Quinton School. Exempted on medical grounds from National Service in the Second World War (he suffered from petit mal in youth), he started his career at the age of 18 as assistant editor of The Outfitter.

As an avid, but impecunious theatre-goer, he somehow persuaded the trade magazine to start a regular theatre review. For two years he saw the best West End shows from the best seats but concentrated his reviews on the clothes actors wore ­ and he called the column "The Dress Circle" .

By 1942 he had become a reporter on the Daily Express. Unannounced, he used the back entrance to dodge the commissionaires, and found his way to the newsroom, where he introduced himself to the news editor. On the basis of this ingenuity, he was given a job on the spot.

In 1945, he took that ingenuity and disregard for conventional procedures to Picture Post, where, as a junior writer during the 1945 general election, he was assigned to cover the expected losers. He was alongside Clement Attlee at the moment the unexpected news arrived that he was to be the new Prime Minister. Also in 1945, Allan was starting his career in broadcasting, creating and writing the questions for BBC Radio's first quiz shows, Quiz Time and Quiz Team. With his sideways eye for further opportunity, he also wrote the books that accompanied the series.

He then had spells as features editor of John Bull Magazine, and assistant editor of Illustrated, before moving into television as a presenter for the BBC's Armchair Traveller in 1953.

When ITV got under way, Allan's ingenuity and eye for the new was perfect. At Rediffusion, where he was first a reporter, then editor of the current affairs programme This Week, he is said to have given David Frost his first job in television.

In 1960 Allan became writer and producer of award-winning documentaries, including Freedom Road, which won all three prizes at the Berlin Television Festival in 1961. The following year he became Rediffusion's Head of Entertainment. There he saw the opportunity to bring live pop music to television for the first time by creating and producing Ready, Steady, Go! It was this seminal pop show, with its catchphrase "The weekend starts here", which caught the buzz of Sixties Britain and became an icon of its time while the BBC was still relying on Juke Box Jury.

Although the show was based on performances by all the Sixties stars ­ the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, the Moody Blues, the Kinks, The Who and many many more an undeniable part of the show's success was Allan's choice of the unknown, untried Cathy McGowan as one of its presenters. The 19-year-old typist from Streatham came to represent the new possibilities for all teenagers and her appointment was typical of Elkan Allan's imagination and ability to see beyond the norm.

After Rediffusion, Allan tried cinema production with the documentary Love in Our Time (1968) before returning to journalism with another revolutionary new idea. Until 1971, newspapers critically reviewed television retrospectively but did not attempt to offer readers any more than the television companies' own descriptions of their programmes in advance. Allan persuaded first Harold Evans, the Editor of The Sunday Times, then with more difficulty the television companies, to facilitate critical previewing. The Sunday Times devoted its back page to Elkan Allan's look at the week ahead, and within weeks the TV preview had become a major selling point for the paper, and within months all the other papers were attempting to emulate it.

Allan's experience as a journalist and as a successful producer of both serious programming and entertainment allowed him to judge the programmes while understanding what the producers were trying to achieve, and it was this balance that gave the Sunday Times TV preview enormous credibility.

In 1973, with his second wife, Angela, he published The Sunday Times Guide to Movies on Television, revised in 1980, and in 1985 he followed it up with A Guide to World Cinema: covering 7,200 films of 1950-84 including capsule reviews and stills from the programmes of the National Film Theatre, London.

During the Seventies and Eighties, Allan became the guru of television previewing and he was one of Andreas Whittam Smith's first senior appointments at the birth of The Independent in 1986. As listings editor, he created a compendious daily listings section, the first of its kind, extending well beyond film and television, and led a team that was to include Jim White (his deputy), Tristan Davies (events listing editor), Alex Renton, Sheila Johnston, Sabine Durrant, Giles Smith, Georgina Brown, Saskia Baron, Louise Levene and Robert Hanks. Under what Davies calls Allan's " erratically watchful eye", all of these were to go on to greater things, Davies himself to become Editor of The Independent on Sunday.

At a time when most think of retiring, Allan continued writing, winning a British Press Award for his travel articles in The Independent, then spending four years in Los Angeles as a freelance Hollywood correspondent writing regularly for Variety and also scriptwriting for A&E's series American Justice.

On his return, he saw more new opportunities. The son of a gambling man, he went to his first race meeting at the age of five, played poker and bridge throughout his life, and used this expertise to take advantage of the onset of online gambling. He wrote extensively about it for a number of on- and off-line publications, and, with his lifetime ability to spot ancillary potential, also acted as consultant to a number of frontline bookmakers continuing with both until taken ill last month.

Roy Addison

Guardian Obit

Obituary
Elkan Allan

Print and broadcasting innovator who created Ready, Steady, Go! and inspired Chris Evans

Neil Lyndon
Friday June 30, 2006
The Guardian

Print and broadcasting innovator who created Ready, Steady, Go! and inspired Chris Evans
Elkan Allan, who has died, aged 83, in a London hospital from septicaemia, was one of the most influential innovators in British media in the 20th century. Both as a television executive and as a print journalist, he created new forms that have become natural idioms in the language of mass communications.

As head of entertainment at Rediffusion Television in the early 1960s, Allan invented and produced Ready, Steady, Go! - the seminal pop show that recreated the mood of a disco in the studio and put dancers within touching distance of performers. Launched at a key moment to fuel the ascent of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who and the rest of the 60s' Britpoppers, RSG - subtitled The Weekend Starts Here! - continued its uncompromisingly demotic approach by employing untrained, unpolished presenters like Cathy McGowan who, with her mod clothes and spade-cut fringe, was the audience made flesh. Whether or not he was aware of the debt, Chris Evans owed much to Allan when, in the late 90s, he launched his own Friday evening show for teenagers, TFI Friday.


Similarly, almost every weekly paper in Britain still owes its style of television listings and preview information to the Sunday Times page that Allan invented in 1971 with his editor, Harold Evans. On that page, for the first time, a reader could scan the entire week's forthcoming output and read a critical assessment of individual programmes. The BBC strenuously resisted this advance, seeing it as a threat to the protected mono- poly - and circulation in millions - of the Radio Times. For a long time, Allan was forced to preview programmes on tapes smuggled out of the BBC by producers under threat of instant dismissal.
Allan was born in Cricklewood, north London, into what he described as a Jewish shtetl. So many members of his extended family lived in the streets around his home and all walked freely in and out of each others' houses that Allan was eight years old before he became aware of the concept that other children had friends to whom they were not related. Elkan's father, Allan Allan (formerly Allan Cohen), owned a printing and signage company. But he was also a gambler and a restlessly inventive - but frequently unsuccessful - entrepreneur, from whom Allan must have drawn much of the energy and creativity that were to animate him throughout his life.

After school, Allan's first job in 1940 was with the Outfitter periodical, but by 1942 he had wangled his way into Arthur Christiansen's Daily Express, extorting a reporter's job out of the news editor by sheer brass neck. By 1945 he was working for Tom Hopkinson at Picture Post where, as the most junior reporter, he was assigned to cover the certain losers of the 1945 election. He was thus at Clement Attlee's side when the Labour leader received the astounding news that he was to be prime minister.

Allan then toured America in a van and got married for the first time. Editorial jobs followed with John Bull and Illustrated magazines, and then he launched himself into radio as the inventor of questions for BBC's Quiz Time and Quiz Team. With a perpetually brilliant eye for the significance of new media (he would be the first you knew to write prose on a word processor, the first to write music on a computer, the first to play chess on the internet), Allan spotted the importance of television as soon as it properly got going in the early 1950s, and was presenting programmes for the BBC as early as 1953.

By the mid-1950s, he was reporting regularly on ITV's groundbreaking current affairs programme This Week, which he was soon to edit. Apart from Ready, Steady, Go!, he was also executive producer of Groucho (which involved babysitting the legendary comedian and handful in London), Double Your Money and Take Your Pick. He won the Berlin Golden Plaque for his documentary, Freedom Road in 1961 and he wrote half-a-dozen scripts in 1966 for Batman, where the character comes to Londinium (London).

Sir James Goldsmith lured Allan away from the Sunday Times to join the staff of his misconceived weekly magazine Now! More happily, his was also one of the first names on Andreas Whittam Smith's list of executives for the setting-up of the Independent, where he was listings editor. He also provided much of that paper's early market research by walking the length of the train he took every day from Ipswich and reporting to the morning conference how many readers of the Independent he had counted.

Allan had a lifelong enthusiasm for two-wheelers and kept an old and battered Honda C90 at Liverpool Street station, with a helmet in its topbox, for travelling around London. He calculated it was too worthless to be stolen.

When he was well into old age, Allan and his second wife Angie moved to Los Angeles, where he became Hollywood correspondent for the Mail on Sunday, wrote for Variety and contributed scripts to American Justice. He also indulged his lifelong passion for poker, which he parlayed into a pension after the couple returned to London, becoming a consultant to a string of online bookmakers and gambling sites and writing regularly for the Racing Post, Online Gaming, Casino Journal, Casino Player, Card Player and Internet Millionaire News. Not for the first time, old Allan Allan would have been proud of the boy.

Allan is survived by Angie and their two children, three children from his first marriage and six grandchildren. He also leaves the inextinguishable memory of an extraordinarily original character. No man was ever funnier, more loving or more enchanting company.

· Elkan Allan (Elkan Philip Cohen), television producer and journalist, born December 8 1922; died June 25 2006

Elkan passed away June 25, 2006

Elkan

It was fun knowing you

1964 - I had just arrived in London from Australia - within a week I was working at ITN in Kingsway

Friday nights were unforgettable - the building was surrounded by teeny bopper fans of the Beatles or the Stones - shouting and screaming -

I'd escape out the back to the pub behind the building and there would be Elkan Allan surrounded by worshipping girls in mini skirts. I gazed from a far. Envy. I wanted to be like Elkan.

Forty years later - whenever I re-told this story - Elkan would grin and say "it's true - it's true".

Skipping forward from '64 to '82 - I was running Molinare, a video facility company - Channel 4 was about to go on the air - Elkan appears out of nowhere with an idea that we'd do the weather for Channel 4 using computer graphics. It was such a wacky idea that I went for it and we made a demotape using the latest computer graphic equipment.

I knew the right person a C4 - and we made an appointment to go to Charlotte Street and run our demo tape. Just as the tape started the tea lady came in, set up a tray in front of the monitor and started pouring - completely blocking out the screen. I was horrified and wanted to run it again. But the C4 Controller of Programs said he'd seen enough and wasn't interested. While I was angry and upset, Elkan started coming up with new ideas there and then. Just one idea after the other.

Nothing ever came of this encounter with Channel 4 but I was amazed at Elkan's ability not to be discouraged and his flow of creativity.

So 10 years later in 1992 when Elkan came up with the idea of doing a documentary about Claus von Bülow I was prepared to go along with him.
Elkan flew off to New York, researched the project at the New York Public Library, went to Rhode Island, bought the rights to the original tapes for a song and came back with everything we needed.

I was used to film crews living high on overseas travel expenses. So when Elkan came back with hardly any expenses, I was amazed. I was busy and hadn't the time to look at all the 60 hours of tape that Elkan brought back, so I drove to his family home in Ipswich and set up a two machine VHS edit suite.

Poor Elk could never master it and finally I decided to take a week off and stay at Ipswich and edit it with Elkan. Angie found me a room and I became part of their family. Finally we cracked it and finished the program.

Columbia TriStar loved it and commissioned five more programs. Foolishly they gave us a contract saying that they only had VHS home distribution rights and we had all other rights. Over the next year, we sold the show to TV stations across the world for well over $125,000. As it had cost only $5,000 to make, this was a huge achievement and the credit goes to Elkan.

From then on on I was always working with Elkan on one of his ideas.

He moved to West Hollywood and showed me how to get a green card. Whenever he picked me up from LAX airport he would be bubbling with new ideas, not just ideas for TV shows but ideas for books, gadgets, games, information phone calls. He was great company.

Every morning at his place in West Hollywood we'd sit around the pool while he came out with the latest idea.

"I sawSpielbergs film "DUEL" last night. I've worked out a computer game. I'm going to write to Spielberg".

Or "Do you think we could store all of Nat King Cole's records in our garage. I went to talk by his daughter and she said that many of his recording are missing - we could find them and store them"

Or "I'm going to write to Richard Branson suggesting that we film a standard holiday and then shoot the passengers getting on the plane - we they arrive they would have a film of their holiday"

or "I've designed a floor light that you just put where you want it - it has a battery - when you go to bed it recharges"

Or - "I want to have a web site where people can say things like "there are more dogs than cats in the world" and people can bet one way or the other.

For every 100 crazy ideas there'd be one good one - but which one? - I loved hearing his ideas and I know he enjoyed have someone who appreciated his creativity.

I rented a room from Elkan & Angie and moved into to the Allan household for months at at time. During the day, we went to garage sales, film previews, theBeverlyy Hills Public Library, a beach near Malibu - Elkan was never short of things to do and places to go.

... and at night we'd play board games, watch TV or visit his favorite Poker Card Club. In the morning around the pool there'd be another round of ideas.

Here he is advising me how to get film production work in Los Angeles:

"What you must do is turn up at their office with a VHS machine and monitor - you might have to wait all day but eventually they will see you. Then you go in and without saying a word, plonk the monitor on their desk and let them watch your program"

"I can't do that Elkan"

"You must. It's the only way to grab their attention. Just posting a tape isn't enough".

Reading his obits in the London newspapers, the point of that story is that Elkan would have done it. In his time he did do it - and succeeded.

Eventually Elk moved back to London and because of Elkan, I moved to the States.

Every day I thank him for the place where I'm living - I thank him that my children love it here.

I thank him for enriching my life.

posted by Stefan Sargent

photo

Biog

Awards
Best Programmes in First 50 Years of ITV, Ready, Steady, Go! 2005
Best Television Programmes of the Millennium British Film Institute No 62: Ready, Steady, Go! 2000
British Press Award, travel writing 1986
Golden Plaque, Berlin Television Contest for Freedom Road (also Critics Prize and Youth Prize) 1967
Best Television Programme, Melody Maker, for Ready, Steady Go! 1964 and 1965

Journalism
To 1985 Early career: The Outfitter, British & Colonial News Services, Daily Express, John Bull, Illustrated
The Sunday Times, television previewer
Now: Television Columnist
After 1985
The Independent: TV and Listing Editor
The Mail on Sunday: Hollywood Correspondent
Variety,  In Production, regular contributor
salon.com: contributor
Guardian Travel, contributor
Racing Post, columnist
Inside Edge, columnist and regular contributor 
Poker Player, regular contributor
Poker Zone TV: consultant

Television1965-80
Presenter: Armchair Traveller, BBC
Interviewer, This Week. Associated-Rediffusion
Editor, This Week
Scriptwriter, The Quiet War
Head of Entertainment, Rediffusion
Producer or Executive Producer, Ready, Steady, Go!, Stars and Garters,  All About You
Scriptwriter. Batman: #105 The Londinium Larcenies, #106 The Foggiest Notion, #107 The Bloody Tower1980-2000
Writer-producer Man of the Month
Scriptwriter, History's Crimes & Trials, A&E
Scriptwriter, Great Crimes, Channel 5
Writer & Producer: Trials (VCR Columbia TriStar)

Movie
Love in Our Time 1969

Books
Editor: Living Opinion : a collection of talks from the BBC's third programme
Good Listening: a study of broadcasting
Love in Our Time: movie tie-in 1969
The Sunday Times Guide to Movies on Television 1972
A Guide to World Cinema 1985 

Consultancies
On novelty betting - to Intertops, Stanley Leisure, Paddy Power, Victor Chandler, Betfair 

Poker
Winner, various tournaments including the Avery Cardoza Cup Tournament 2004 

My career, so far ...

My career has encompassed both journalism and television in London and Los Angeles, where I was The Mail On Sunday's correspondent and a writer for Variety.

I write regularly for the UK magazine, Inside Edge, about poker and novelty betting. I also write for Poker Player and am a consultant for Poker Zone TV.

I have also also been a consultant to various online poker rooms and bookmakers, including Victor Chandler, Intertops,
Stanley Leisure, Paddy Power, CelebPoker and Betfair.

I was a reporter on the Daily Express, columnist on The Sunday Times and The Times and a senior editor of The Independent.

In television, I was Head of Entertainment at Rediffusion, editor of "This Week" and creator/producer of "Ready, Steady, Go!", voted as one of the 100 Best Television Programmes of all time in the British Film Institute Millennium Poll and 50 Best ITV programmes ever.

I have written and produced many video and DVD documentaries that have also played on television in both the US and the UK. Among them are a series of Famous Crimes and a series on Famous Trials.

Won the Berlin Golden Plaque and the only two other prizes at this event (Press Prize and Youth Prize) for his documentary, "Freedom Road".

I am a keen poker player, as I grew up in a gambling household. I've also written extensively for the Racing Post, Online Gaming, Casino Journal, Casino Player, Card Player and Internet Millionaire News.