Alan Coleman

I’ve always hated Christmas jumpers. It’s one of those tedious habits adopted by the middle class that seems to gain momentum annually. Men are the usual offenders, using the Christmas jumper as just another excuse to draw attention to their otherwise beige and bland lifestyle...

Although I’d never stayed in hospital before and only ever had a passing need for their services, I’d always admired and supported the NHS and everything it stands for. Stupidly, I’d always imagined a hospital ward to be a Holby City-esque world of chatting nurses, bowls...

Any healthy society needs elements that refuse to behave, that don’t follow the rules, ignore what is expected, or what is required. It’s the punk ethos that we celebrate and scorn in equal measure. In a modern sense being a supermodel epitomises the punk, a self obsessed...

I hate this expression, it fills me with fear and dread of what is going to follow. A favour is a request, probably unreasonable, by someone who wants something and either doesn’t want to pay for it or can’t be bothered to do it themselves. A favour is different from...

As a child in the 1970s I went to a small Church of England Primary school in the rural Essex village of Colne Engaine. Situated at the edge of the village the school looked over fields and woods in three directions, in all seasons the slightly undulating expanse of countryside...

A few years ago we started calling my Dad “The Buzzard”, due to his bald head, beakish nose and general birdlike appearance. As it turns out we were referring to a Vulture which is more bald and Geoff Coleman like in appearance, rather than the Buzzard, which is well...

The only music I really had access to when I was younger was my Dad’s record collection. He didn’t have much in the way of vinyl, maybe enough to fit into a couple of cardboard boxes and most of it had been played to death or had been scratched by us as kids. It sat...

I first heard this record round my cousin Paul’s house in Ipswich after it was released in 1985. Paul was a townie and a casual, unlike me and my brothers who where from a rural village in Essex. Never as well dressed, we were as unlikely to wear electric blue cords or Fila...

As a boy I always wanted an England shirt, I don’t remember precisely when I started wanting one but it was probably during the Espana ’82 campaign, the year that Paul Mariner and Trevor Brooking were in the squad. It was white with a broad blue and red stripe across...