So long, Miles

I was browsing through the newspaper on the bus to work last Thursday morning, not fully awake, when I was brought up short by the news of the death, too young, of the humorist Miles Kington. From the days when I used to read his columns in my father's copy of Punch he has been one of my favourite writers. His columns in the Times and then, for the last twenty-odd years in the Independent, have consistently brightened my days. I wouldn't have believed it was possible to write such a consistently funny column, day in, day out, for such a long time, and to hit the mark so often, up to the day of his death.

I owe much to Miles, not least through his invariably sound recommendations to investigate writers previously unknown. I remember my delight at acquiring his book of translations of Alphonse Alais more vividly than my doctoral viva the same day.

As a schoolboy I loved Punch, now long defunct. But in the last year have died the three contributors who I most enjoyed: Alan Coren, Handelsman and now Miles Kington. Whereas I hadn't seen the new work of the first two for years, my choice of newspaper meant that I have been reading Miles almost every day since my teenage years. Like so many others', my life will be poorer now.