Biography

Alan Davies was born in Loughton, Essex, and was brought up in Chingford, on the outskirts of London. After graduating in Drama & Theatre Studies from the University of Kent in 1988 (which would award him an honorary Doctorate in 2003, his first forays into comedy began that same year at the Whitstable Labour Club. He soon made a name for himself, winning the Time Out Best Young Comic in 1991, and the Edinburgh Festival Critics Awards for Comedy in 1994. That year's show was released on cassette the year later as Alan Davies Live At The Lyric, recorded at the Lyric Theatre. Later, a version of his stand-up comedy show 'Urban Trauma', which ran in the West End at the Duchess Theatre and toured the UK and Australia, was shown on BBC One in 1998.

In [y]1994[y] and 1995, Davies hosted Alan's Big One for three consecutive series on BBC Radio 1 and then appeared in Channel 4's spoof travel show One For The Road. This led to perhaps his first major role, as the title character in Jonathan Creek. Here he played a man tasked with the constant job of devising new tricks for a stage magician, with a side interest in solving crimes. This would run from 1997 to 2004, with a special episode broadcast on New Year's Day 2009.

In 1998, Davies co-wrote and starred in his own radio sitcom, The Alan Davies Show, and in 2001 he took on the role of Robert Gossage in Bob and Rose, a comedy drama about a gay man who falls for a woman. During this period he also featured in several advertisements for the bank Abbey National. He has undertaken a number of dramatic roles, including a much-loved cameo in the episode of ITV detective series Lewis, in which he played Marcus Richard, a scamming quizmaster at a tournament at an Oxford University college. Since 2014, he has hosted his own comedy chat show on Dave, entitled Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, and the programme The Dog Rescuers on Channel 5, which follows the work of the animal charity RSPCA.

Davies is best-known across the United Kingdom for his role as permanent panellist on the long-running BBC Two quiz game QI, outlasting hosts Stephen Fry (2003-2016) and Sandi Toksvig (2016-). He has appeared in almost every episode, apart from the 2011 Comic Relief special, and Episode 10 of Series D, 'Divination', in which a short, pre-recorded video was shown instead, as he was in Paris attending the 2006 Champions League final during the time of recording, watching his beloved favourite football team, Arsenal F.C. Indeed, in 2001 he even began hosting a podcast focused on the club, entitled "The Tuesday Club", which ran from 2011 to 2018.

In 2019 he played the role of university physics professor Henry Brooks in David Baddiel's play "God's Dice", which premiered at the Soho Theatre in London.