Alan trained as an actor at RSAMD, graduating in 1991 with a BA (Dramatic Studies)

Since then, as an actor, he has worked and toured with all the country’s leading theatre companies, including Citizens Theatre, National Theatre of Scotland, Traverse Theatre, Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Tron Theatre, The Arches, Wildcat, Borderline, Perth Rep, Dundee Rep, The Byre, Aberdeen Performing Arts, A Play A Pie And A Pint, and 7:84.

In addition to several radio, and feature/short film credits, he has worked extensively in television in Scotland. Credits include five Taggarts, four years on High Road (STV), two seasons of the double BAFTA Award winning Limmy’s Show, Rab C Nesbitt, Still Game, Dear Green Place, Scot Squad, Single Father, Sea Of Souls, River City. (BBC)

Other writing credits/commissions include I Dreamed A Dream (The Susan Boyle Musical) which toured to the country critical acclaim. It’s Behind You! for A Play, A Pie and A Pint (Oran Mor). Radio/Television commissions for BBC Radio Scotland include Chewin’ The Fat, The Wide Nation, Velvet Cabaret. For BBC Scotland television: Pulp Video, Know Your Onions, River City. For BBC Radio 4: Week Ending, Saturday Live.

Alan’s involvement with Creative Licht has been specifically in connection with the medium of Pantomime, which features large in Alan’s working life, as a writer, performer and director.

As an actor, he has performed in Pantomime every year since leaving drama college, and has played panto dame for twenty-five of the last twenty-eight years, the last sixteen of these being at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen… a show which he also writes.

As a writer, he writes the pantomimes and Christmas shows for theatres the length and breadth of the UK. In Scotland, these commissions have come from the Citizens Theatre, Perth Rep, Adam Smith Kirkcaldy, Carnegie Hall Dunfermline, Greenock Beacon, Palace Kilmarnock, His Majesty’s Theatre Aberdeen, SECC Glasgow, RSAMD/RCS and Imagine Theatre. 

He is the principal panto script writer for Qdos Entertainment (the world’s largest panto producer with 34 in UK production in 2019), and Alan currently oversees the development/writing of these scripts. His thoughts on the medium of Panto can be seen/heard here.

Alan’s agent is Julie Hamilton of Coulter Management Agency.