Alex Zane
English comedian
Alex Zane (born Faris Alexander L. Albayaty) is an English television presenter and DJ.
Early and personal life
Zane was born in Leeds and attended Boston Spa School before going on to study Medicine at University College London, a course which he left after a year, and then Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College. His father is an academic based in Trinidad and his mother a charity worker from Leeds, though a March 2014 interview with the Evening Standard reports that "Wikipedia has Zane's real name as Faris Alexander L Albayaty but when I email asking him to clarify this and some other family details his responses are prompt, polite and discreetly uninformative". He bought a house in Highgate in 2005, having previously rented in the area. In June 2018, it was reported that he was engaged to Nettie Wakefield following a "whirlwind year-long romance". They separated in 2022 following a five month marriage.
Stand-up comedy and radio
Zane began his career at the age of 18 when he became a finalist on an open-mic competition called So You Think You're Funny. He moved to London to concentrate on his career, and before leaving medical school, he presented "The Alex Zane Show" on UCL's student radio station Rare FM. He also presented on Wired FM, which led to his own show on London alternative/Indie station Xfm. His radio show was heard by MTV producers, who subsequently signed him up to present shows such as Screenplay and TRL. From April 2007 to April 2009 he presented the weekday breakfast show on Xfm. Zane left Xfm in April 2009, with the station stating that his sudden departure was by "mutual agreement" following a disagreement over a controversial self-created song by Zane.
In April 2010 it was announced Alex would jointly present a Friday evening radio show on NME Radio with the creator of the indie club night Propaganda, DJ Dan.
“Alex Zane” enters the record as english comedian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alex, Zane and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alex Zane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.