When he first appeared on television screens back in 1994 – first as sportscaster on the satirical news show The Day Today then as the host of his own chat show, Knowing Me, Knowing You – the age of Laddism and Britpop was charging over the horizon, ready to trample over the conservative stuffiness of that had pervaded before it.

Alan personified everything that was ripe for ridicule: his love of the quaint and quintessentially British, his painfully poor taste and blinkered view of the world (beyond Norwich, anyway) that borders on – before crashing right over and into – the offensive. He was also man old before his years – no dusty old blazer could hide the fact that he was clearly a man in his 20s.