Background
Hamel was born in Toronto, Ontario.
Hamel was born in Toronto, Ontario.
He attended the television arts programme at Ryerson Institute of Technology in 1954 but did not graduate.
He is Jewish. Hamel co-hosted the Canadian children"s television series Razzle Dazzle (1961-1964). The show featured a talking turtle, Howard. In the late 1970s, he hosted The Alan Hamel Show, a popular daytime talk show on Canadian television People magazine considered him "Canada"s leading television talk show host".
Foreign several years during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hamel was a commercial pitchman for American Stores, a chain of supermarkets spanning coast to coast.
Hamel specifically did advertisements for Alpha Beta stores in the western United States and also appeared in occasional spots for Acme Markets in the northeastern United States. He occasionally performed as an actor as well, also sometimes on Somers" shows.