Don't really know, but I seem to have been aware of his existence for a goodish quantity of time.
Alan moments
I suppose a key Alan moment must have been the time I noted in my diary that the TV programme I was watching (that's how exciting my life is) was a bit crap but that I was temporarily in love with Alan Davies. I then went on to explain how this was probably just a side effect of my menstrual cycle. The programme was A Many Splintered Thing, in which Alan plays a man who's having an affair, and I thought it was rubbish and vowed never to watch it again. It improved quite a lot in the second series though.
I temporarily fell in love with Alan again when he played Jonathan Creek, which I enjoyed watching with my mum (can you take any more excitement?) Alan was great in this, as was Caroline Quentin.
I think though, it was Bob and Rose that really clinched the deal, so to speak. I remember reading an article about it before it was shown, and thinking, "Hmm... a gay man falls in love with a woman... ITV... that's going to go down well - not." But I watched it because I was intrigued by Russell T. Davies' explanation of why he wrote it and where he got the idea from (it happened to some friends of his). And it was absolutely bloody "Don't bother ringing me while it's on," "God, I wish I'd taped it" brilliant! Everybody, but everybody, was fantastic in this, particularly Alan, Lesley Sharpe as Rose, and Jessica Stevenson as Bob's jealous best friend. Also, the guy who played Bob's ex-boyfriend, whose name I can't remember (sorry).
There are more than a few people who refuse to believe me about Bob and Rose, who didn't watch it because they they just hated the whole idea. I think that's understandable, but in the end, well... wrong. Bob and Rose was about celebrating human complexity, weirdness and difference, and I salute Alan, and all who were involved. Wasn't keen on the last five minutes though.
A last nice Alan moment comes from his stand-up and is about the pros and cons of living alone. Sometimes, he says, you'll come home and go "Oh... nobody's here..." And then again, other times, you come home and go, "Oh! Nobody's here!"
How true.