Alan Lake is the pseudonym used by Alan Ayling, a computer expert from Highgate, London. Until 2011 he was a director of Pacific Capital Investment Management. Ayling was described by the media in 2011 as a millionaire, and as the "chief financier" of the English Defence League (EDL), which Lake reportedly "fiercely denied". He did admit to having "given some money to help some EDL things happen" in his first television interview, on Norwegian TV 2. According to then EDL leader Tommy Robinson, Ayling had never been a member of the EDL, and the EDL had not received funding from him. Responding to media claims saying the opposite, Robinson said that "he [Ayling] spoke at two demos and he wore a suit, and all of a sudden he was a millionaire funder."