Miles Kington

I mentioned a British columnist here the other day, Miles Kington, and had a wonderful quote from him.  As I mentioned, I'd tracked down a bunch of articles by him, which were great, and said I'd post a few.  First though, I thought it would be nice to provide a terrific tribute to the humorist by one of his former co-workers at The Independent.  It puts him and his work in a richer perspective, and shows why he was so admired.

"Quantity was one thing, quality quite another," writes Simon O'Hagan.  "And the quality of Miles’s columns never wavered."  That's particularly impressive when one has written over 10,000 columns.

Mr. O'Hagan worked at the copy desk and as a result the happy recipient of the material Miles Kington sent in, that often included whimsical notes.  He comments, "What did Miles write about? Everything and nothing. Especially nothing. Writing about nothing – or almost nothing – was I think where his real genius lay. He wrote about words, about motorway service stations, about being out and about on his bicycle. He was a spoof agony uncle. He noticed things no one else noticed."

You can read the tribute here.  Occasional columns to follow.