Miles Kington
Encyclopedia
Miles Beresford Kington was a British
journalist
, musician (a double bass player for Instant Sunshine
and other groups) and broadcaster
.
, County Down
, Northern Ireland
, where his father Bill, a soldier, was then posted. Subsequently, his father ran the Border Brewery
in Wrexham
. His mother was American. Kington was educated at Bilton Grange
, a prep school in Rugby, then later Trinity College, Glenalmond, a boys' independent
boarding school
in Glenalmond
, Scotland (now Glenalmond College). Among his contemporaries was the future journalist Alexander Cockburn
. During a gap year, then rare, Kington worked as a translator in New York
, and lived in Greenwich Village
. He then studied Modern Languages (French and German) at Trinity College, Oxford
. After graduation he spent some time writing with Terry Jones
, an Oxford contemporary but the teaming did not click, and Jones was in reality waiting for his friend Michael Palin
to graduate.
, Kington began his writing career at the satirical magazine Punch, where he spent some 15 years. It was during this time, in the late 1970s, that he began writing his Franglais
columns written in a comical mixture of English
and French
. These short sketches purported to be a study course taking as their raison d'être that "les Français ne parlent pas le O-level français" ("the French do not speak O-level French"). They were later published as a series of books (Let's Parler Franglais!, Let's Parler Franglais Again, Let's Parler Franglais One More Temps, and so on). During the 1980s he presented Steam Days
, an informative programme about Britain's railways. He presented an episode, "Three Miles High", in the first series of the BBC
's Great Railway Journeys
travelling through parts of Peru
and Bolivia
.
Taught the piano from the age of seven he found, when he fell in love with jazz during adolescence, that being able to read music he was unable to improvise; he therefore took up the trombone. At Oxford he found that several fellow undergraduates played better so he switched to the double bass
when someone pointed out the shortage of bass players at the university. Kington was for many years a member of the cabaret
quartet
Instant Sunshine
. To his regret, he only played in a jazz group for a brief period in 1962 during a summer job in Spain, where he ran into the British politician Enoch Powell
, apparently looking somewhat displeased. Meeting Powell years later at a Punch meal and reminding him of their previous meeting, he was amused by Powell's comment: "I never forgot a face". Kington moved away from London in the 1980s, remarried, and worked from his home at Limpley Stoke
, near Bath.
He wrote a humorous column for the British newspaper
The Independent
, which he joined in 1987 after six years at The Times
. He also wrote a similar column for The Oldie
.
Regular topics for his columns included
He also satirized Bertrand Russell
à la Punch in "Bertrand's Mind Wins over Mater", in Welcome to Kington: Includes All the Pieces You Cut Out From The Independent and Lost (1989). In addition, Kington wrote two stage plays. Waiting for Stoppard, a good-natured pastiche of early Tom Stoppard
plays and simultaneously a convoluted farce involving the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, was seen at the Bristol New Vic, Southwark Playhouse and other venues in 1995. The following year came The Death of Tchaikovsky - a Sherlock Holmes Mystery, in which Kington appeared in person at the Edinburgh Festival.
Kington died at his home in Limpley Stoke
, near Bath, after a short illness, having just filed his final copy for the Independent. He had suffered from pancreatic cancer
. In October 2008, "How Shall I tell the Dog?", written by him about events after receiving the news that he was dying of pancreatic cancer, was serialised by BBC Radio Four, featuring Michael Palin
as Kington.
A quotation frequently attributed to him is: "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad."
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, musician (a double bass player for Instant Sunshine
Instant Sunshine
Instant Sunshine is a comedy musical cabaret trio who sing their own original witty and whimsical songs to acoustic guitar accompaniment. It was formed in 1966 by three doctors at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, Peter Christie, David Barlow and Alan Maryon-Davis. In 1972 they were joined by the...
and other groups) and broadcaster
Presenter
A presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...
.
Early life
He was born in DownpatrickDownpatrick
Downpatrick is a medium-sized town about 33 km south of Belfast in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is the county town of Down with a rich history and strong connection to Saint Patrick. It had a population of 10,316 at the 2001 Census...
, County Down
County Down
-Cities:*Belfast *Newry -Large towns:*Dundonald*Newtownards*Bangor-Medium towns:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, where his father Bill, a soldier, was then posted. Subsequently, his father ran the Border Brewery
Border Breweries (Wrexham)
Border Breweries Ltd was a brewery firm formerly based in Wrexham in the United Kingdom which at its peak was a significant element of the Welsh brewing industry....
in Wrexham
Wrexham
Wrexham is a town in Wales. It is the administrative centre of the wider Wrexham County Borough, and the largest town in North Wales, located in the east of the region. It is situated between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley close to the border with Cheshire, England...
. His mother was American. Kington was educated at Bilton Grange
Bilton Grange
Bilton Grange is a preparatory school located in Dunchurch, near Rugby, Warwickshire. The present headmaster is Mr. JP Kirk, the eighth in total....
, a prep school in Rugby, then later Trinity College, Glenalmond, a boys' independent
Independent school
An independent school is a school that is independent in its finances and governance; it is not dependent upon national or local government for financing its operations, nor reliant on taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of tuition charges, gifts, and in some cases the...
boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
in Glenalmond
Glenalmond
Glenalmond or Glen Almond is a glen which stretches for several miles to the west of the city of Perth in Perth and Kinross, Scotland and down which the River Almond flows. The upper half of the glen runs through mountainous country and is virtually uninhabited whilst the lower, easterly section...
, Scotland (now Glenalmond College). Among his contemporaries was the future journalist Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Claud Cockburn is an American political journalist. Cockburn was brought up in Ireland but has lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch...
. During a gap year, then rare, Kington worked as a translator in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and lived in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
. He then studied Modern Languages (French and German) at Trinity College, Oxford
Trinity College, Oxford
The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of Sir Thomas Pope , or Trinity College for short, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It stands on Broad Street, next door to Balliol College and Blackwells bookshop,...
. After graduation he spent some time writing with Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
, an Oxford contemporary but the teaming did not click, and Jones was in reality waiting for his friend Michael Palin
Michael Palin
Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....
to graduate.
Career
In particular inspired by the American humourist S. J. PerelmanS. J. Perelman
Sidney Joseph Perelman, almost always known as S. J. Perelman , was an American humorist, author, and screenwriter. He is best known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker...
, Kington began his writing career at the satirical magazine Punch, where he spent some 15 years. It was during this time, in the late 1970s, that he began writing his Franglais
Franglais
Franglais , a portmanteau combining the French words "français" and "anglais" , is a slang term for an interlanguage, although the word has different overtones in French and English....
columns written in a comical mixture of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. These short sketches purported to be a study course taking as their raison d'être that "les Français ne parlent pas le O-level français" ("the French do not speak O-level French"). They were later published as a series of books (Let's Parler Franglais!, Let's Parler Franglais Again, Let's Parler Franglais One More Temps, and so on). During the 1980s he presented Steam Days
Steam Days
Steam Days is a 1986 BBC 2 television documentary series written and presented by Miles Kington. Each episode is themed around the history of British steam locomotives and railways, particularly highlighting preserved locomotives operating at the time of its filming. The series consists of six half...
, an informative programme about Britain's railways. He presented an episode, "Three Miles High", in the first series of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Great Railway Journeys
Great Railway Journeys
Great Railway Journeys, originally titled Great Railway Journeys of the World, is a recurring series of travel documentaries produced by BBC Television...
travelling through parts of Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
and Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
.
Taught the piano from the age of seven he found, when he fell in love with jazz during adolescence, that being able to read music he was unable to improvise; he therefore took up the trombone. At Oxford he found that several fellow undergraduates played better so he switched to the double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
when someone pointed out the shortage of bass players at the university. Kington was for many years a member of the cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
quartet
Quartet
In music, a quartet is a method of instrumentation , used to perform a musical composition, and consisting of four parts.-Western art music:...
Instant Sunshine
Instant Sunshine
Instant Sunshine is a comedy musical cabaret trio who sing their own original witty and whimsical songs to acoustic guitar accompaniment. It was formed in 1966 by three doctors at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, Peter Christie, David Barlow and Alan Maryon-Davis. In 1972 they were joined by the...
. To his regret, he only played in a jazz group for a brief period in 1962 during a summer job in Spain, where he ran into the British politician Enoch Powell
Enoch Powell
John Enoch Powell, MBE was a British politician, classical scholar, poet, writer, and soldier. He served as a Conservative Party MP and Minister of Health . He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made the controversial Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to mass immigration from...
, apparently looking somewhat displeased. Meeting Powell years later at a Punch meal and reminding him of their previous meeting, he was amused by Powell's comment: "I never forgot a face". Kington moved away from London in the 1980s, remarried, and worked from his home at Limpley Stoke
Limpley Stoke
Limpley Stoke is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, in the Avon Valley, between Bath and Freshford. The village is below the A36 road.The civil parish, which had a population of 637 in 2001, also includes the hamlet of Waterhouse, and the outskirts of the Somerset village of Midford. The 18th...
, near Bath.
He wrote a humorous column for the British newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, which he joined in 1987 after six years at The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. He also wrote a similar column for The Oldie
The Oldie
The Oldie is a monthly magazine launched in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, who for 23 years was the editor of Private Eye. It carries general interest articles, humour and cartoons, and has an eclectic list of contributors, including James Le Fanu, John Sweeney, Thomas Stuttaford, Virginia Ironside,...
.
Regular topics for his columns included
- Answers to a Christmas quiz that was never printed
- Fictional court reporting
- Jazz
- Motorway ballads
- Proceedings of the United Deities
- Spot the fictional news story
- Things for which there is no word
- "Albanian Proverbs" which appear profound at first glance, but are actually meaningless
- Letters concerning a recently deceased celebrity's supposed love of cricketCricketCricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
He also satirized Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
à la Punch in "Bertrand's Mind Wins over Mater", in Welcome to Kington: Includes All the Pieces You Cut Out From The Independent and Lost (1989). In addition, Kington wrote two stage plays. Waiting for Stoppard, a good-natured pastiche of early Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
plays and simultaneously a convoluted farce involving the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, was seen at the Bristol New Vic, Southwark Playhouse and other venues in 1995. The following year came The Death of Tchaikovsky - a Sherlock Holmes Mystery, in which Kington appeared in person at the Edinburgh Festival.
Kington died at his home in Limpley Stoke
Limpley Stoke
Limpley Stoke is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, in the Avon Valley, between Bath and Freshford. The village is below the A36 road.The civil parish, which had a population of 637 in 2001, also includes the hamlet of Waterhouse, and the outskirts of the Somerset village of Midford. The 18th...
, near Bath, after a short illness, having just filed his final copy for the Independent. He had suffered from pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer refers to a malignant neoplasm of the pancreas. The most common type of pancreatic cancer, accounting for 95% of these tumors is adenocarcinoma, which arises within the exocrine component of the pancreas. A minority arises from the islet cells and is classified as a...
. In October 2008, "How Shall I tell the Dog?", written by him about events after receiving the news that he was dying of pancreatic cancer, was serialised by BBC Radio Four, featuring Michael Palin
Michael Palin
Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....
as Kington.
A quotation frequently attributed to him is: "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad."
Franglais books
- Let's parler Franglais! London: Robson, 1979, ISBN 0860510816.
- Let's parler Franglais again! London: Robson, 1980, ISBN 0860511146.
- Parlez vous Franglais? London: Robson, 1981, ISBN 0860511502.
- Let's parler Franglais one more temps. London: Robson Books, 1982, ISBN 0860511782.
- The Franglais lieutenant's woman. London: Robson, 1986, ISBN 086051398X.
Other books
- Miles and Miles. London: Hamilton, 1982, ISBN 0241109019 .
- Moreover. London: Robson, 1982, ISBN 0860511731.
- A Wolf In Frog's Clothing. Methuen, 1983, ISBN 0413526801.
- Nature made ridiculously simple, or, How to identify absolutely everything. London: Hamilton, 1983, ISBN 0241111161.
- Moreover,Too. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985, ISBN 0140085408.
- Welcome to Kington. London: Robson, 1989, ISBN 0860516164.
- Steaming Through Britain. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990, ISBN 0044404883.
- Jazz: An Anthology. London: HarperCollins, 1992, ISBN 0002151995.
- Motorway Madness. London: HarperCollins, 1998, ISBN 0002559129.
- Someone Like Me: Tales From A Borrowed Childhood. London: Headline, 2005, ISBN 0755313569 (autobiography).
- How Shall I Tell the Dog?: Last Laughs from the Master. London: Profile Books, 2008, ISBN 1846681979.
Stage plays
- Waiting For Stoppard. ~1995.
- Death Of Tchaikovsky – A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. ~1996.