Miles Kington

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Miles Kington (born 1941) is a British journalist, jazz musician and broadcaster. He was born in Northern Ireland (where his father, a soldier, was then posted), went to school at Trinity College, Glenalmond, a boys' independent boarding school in Glenalmond, Scotland. The school has since been renamed Glenalmond College. He then studied Modern Languages at Trinity College, Oxford.

He began his career at the now defunct satirical magazine Punch, where he spent some 15 years. It was during this time, in the late 1970s, that he began writing Let's Parler Franglais!. Written in a comical mixture of English and French, these short sketches purporting to be a study course took as their raison d'être the undeniable fact 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 steam trains.

A lover of jazz since boyhood, he plays the double bass (and other instruments) and was for many years the bass player of the cabaret quartet Instant Sunshine. He has now moved away from London and works from his home at Bradford on Avon, near Bath.

He currently writes a humour column for the United Kingdom newspaper The Independent, which he joined at its launch in 1986 after many years at The Times. He also writes a similar column for The Oldie.

Regular topics for this include

The 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 cricket

He has 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).