Miles Kington (b 13/5/41) wrote a daily humorous column for thirty years, for The Times and (since 1986) for The Independent. Before that he was on the staff of Punch for fifteen years. Previously, he had studied French and German at Oxford and prior to that had resisted pressure from his father to go into the family brewery. His earlier memories were confused and unhelpful. At Punch he started the popular “Let’s Parler Franglais” column which furnished four Penguin paperbacks and many middle class loos. He left Punch in 1980 to go to Peru to make one of the BBC’s “Great Railway Journeys” programmes and after several other films was well embarked on a TV career until he turned down the invitation to present “Around The World In Eighty Days” and was never asked back. Over the years he fitted in his daily column with translating books from the French, reviewing jazz, playing double bass, publishing humour collections and making many Radio 4 programmes. In 2006 he published a humorous mock autobiography, Someone Like Me, in which everything was made up, though it fooled many people including his publishers. Miles Kington died on the 31st January 2008, shortly after filing his final column for The Independent.