James Allen (Formula One commentator)

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James Allen (born 5 November 1966) is a British Formula One commentator for ITV. Formerly a pupil at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby, and student of English and Modern Languages at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

[edit] Overview

Allen has worked in Formula One since 1990. He has been in racing all his life; his father Bill raced for Lotus at Le Mans in the early 1960s and was in the sport's administration, on the RAC motor sports council. James started his F1 career with the Brabham Team in 1990 and in 1991 worked with future TV colleagues Mark Blundell and Martin Brundle. He was news editor at Autosport magazine from 1992 to 1994 and in parallel worked as F1 pit lane reporter for American network ESPN from 1993 to 1996. With Nigel Mansell's move to IndyCar in 1993, Allen was hired by ITV in 1994 to help present coverage of the season. When ITV gained the rights to broadcast the Formula One championship in 1997, he joined the team as pit lane reporter.

With Murray Walker unable to commentate at the 2000 French Grand Prix, Allen took over as one of the main commentators alongside Martin Brundle. Murray wound down his career the next year, missing five races, all of which James covered. ITV had considered trying a number of guest commentators to garner who would be best suited to replace Murray, but instead opted to keep Allen on board full-time. He took over permanently after the 2001 United States Grand Prix and has since commentated on every Grand Prix. The 2007 Canadian Grand Prix was Allen's 100th as a commentator.^[1]

Despite his long run as ITV's lead commentator, Allen is unpopular with some viewers, and has been the subject of petitions calling for his removal. Satirical motoring website Sniff Petrol ran a campaign to have Allen removed from the commentary box, titled "Stop The Cock", even producing merchandise to support it.^[2]^[3] A similar Facebook group had 1350 members as of June 2008.^[4] It has been suggested on Sniff Petrol that 'the cock has been stopped', assuming when F1 moves to the BBC in 2009 that James Allen is left behind.^[5]

Allen has written three books, the first of which was his ghost-written autobiography of Nigel Mansell. He has also written two books on Michael Schumacher: Quest for Redemption (also published as Driven to Extremes) and The Edge of Greatness.^[6] He has been the F1 correspondent of the Financial Times newspaper since 1999.

Allen is married and lives in London. He has two sons, Enzo and Emerson. Despite the rumors Enzo is not named after Enzo Ferrari, but rather a TV character. James mentioned this in the Australian Grand Prix Programme in 2003. Emerson is named after Emerson Fittipaldi who was a famous F1 driver of the seventies.