The Kington letters: Final words of a comic genius

Ever the master humorist, Miles Kington kept readers laughing right up to the end. But at the time of his death last week, the 'Independent' columnist was also working on a literary farewell - a series of typically brilliant letters to his friend and agent, Gill Coleridge...

12 November 2007

Dear Gill

About a year ago, I said I wanted to do another book. That is, I was going to write it and you were going to sell it.

Fine, you said. What kind of book?

A bestseller, I said. Something that will be so funny that everyone will buy it, even when it isn't Christmas, and which will bring back dignity to the Humour shelves in bookshops, which are presently occupied by miserable things called Is It Me, Or Is Everywhere A Crap Town? or Why Are Penguins Camouflaged Like That, When There Aren't Any Head Waiters In The Antarctic?

Fine, you said. Got any ideas?

One thing at a time, I said. First I get the urge to write the book. Which I have already got! Then later I get the idea for the book.

Fine, you said. Let me know when you have got a good idea for a book.

Well, I think I have now got a good idea for a book which, oddly enough, was not one I thought of, but was given to me by a doctor, quite by accident.

As you know, I went into hospital in spring 2007 to have my liver looked at, because blood tests showed that my liver was misbehaving. Almost immediately they discovered the reason: I had contracted an unusual genetic disease called haemochromatosis, which makes it difficult for the body to absorb iron, so my bloodstream had become abnormally high in iron content.

(This might explain why I was being so often stopped by security people in airports. Even after I had emptied all my pockets and taken off all my metal accessories, I was still setting off the alarm when I went through the metal detector. They could never find any reason for it. But it may have been the high metal content of my blood... at least, so I claimed in a piece I wrote about it at the time.)

Haemochromatosis is no big deal and can be cleared up by a programme of blood-letting. (Every time you lose the blood, the body makes some more, and the new blood is all iron-free.) But they then spotted some trouble in my bile duct and decided to insert a plastic pipe to open up a small blockage. Then they decided to take out my gall bladder. When they did that, they spotted some irregularities in my liver and pancreas, and decided to take some samples, and it was after looking closely at those that they decided I had got cancer. Nosy parkers.

Cancer of the pancreas, it was. This was unfortunate, because, as a doctor friend of mine said to me, "that's not one of the nice ones". Not much research work has been done on it, you can't operate on it, and even chemotherapy does little more than arrest the process. So, at the age of 66, I suddenly found that my expected lifespan of another twenty years at least had shrunk dramatically.

The surgeon who had operated on me was surprisingly upbeat. "Don't think of yourself as dying," he said. "We are all dying anyway. Just think that you now know what you are going to die of. Up to now, it might have been a heart attack, or a stroke. But now we're pretty sure it's going to be cancer. Though not for ages, yet. With luck."

The oncologist who did the follow-up chat was less upbeat. "Statistically you will be doing well if you are still hale and hearty a year from now."

That was a shock. It was what finally brought me up short. Till that moment, I had been unsure what to think. My mind was full of images of writers cut off in their prime, and of La Dame aux Camélias, and of having to give up wine, and of seeing weeping relatives round my deathbed – in other words, I was full of self-pity – but suddenly all this miasma of hand-wringing crystallised into one single thought: I did not have as much time left as I thought in which to do all the important things of life, such as:

Sorting out the family finances.

Finally getting round to seeing American Beauty.

Writing a book for you.

But it did dimly occur to me at last that I had the glimmerings of an idea for a book for you. People who have been told they have cancer are sometimes brave enough to start writing books about their experience, and how they came to terms with it. For instance, the chap who was married to Nigella Lawson, whose name I can never remember. He did it. He got the TV cameras in as well, I believe. There was a woman called Picardie too, wasn't there? Ruth? Something like that. And there was a French comedian called Pierre Desproges, who I always rather liked the sound of, because not only did he write funny stuff, he also had a weekly radio or TV spot in France on which he delivered his quirky views on the week's news, and in which his newly diagnosed cancer became a weekly character. Until he died.

I also purchased a book while I was in Canada, called Typing, by Matt Cohen. Matt Cohen was a not very old writer who had suddenly been given another six months to live before he died of lung cancer, and decided to spend the time writing his memoirs, Typing. They were brilliant.

Apart from the Cohen, I have never read any of these books. I tend to shy away from bad news. But I know that a writer wouldn't devote his last months to writing about cancer if there wasn't some money in it. I'd like to do the same. Mark you, I think phrases like, "cashing in on cancer" give quite the wrong impression. What I mean is, "making cancer work for its living".

What do you think?

Love, Miles

17 November 2007

Dear Gill,

No, you are right. Although I had said I had come up with an idea for a book, I hadn't done anything of the sort. I had only come up with an idea for an idea for a book. I still have to think of an angle.

You ask me if I have mentioned this idea for an idea for a book to anyone. Yes, I have, but only to one person. To the oncologist at the hospital.

Actually, I think you would have been quite proud of my professionalism during our little interview. When he was patiently explaining to me the pros and cons of various treatments, and his views on alternative cancer treatments (described to me by one doctor I know as "an expensive way of buying love"), he said at one point: "Do you have any questions?"

I can never think of proper questions at that moment, except for cowardly ones ("Is it going to hurt a lot?") or unanswerable ones ("Will it stop me from playing the double bass?"), but this time I knew what I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask: "Can I get a book out of this?"

I am experienced enough to know by now that you have to be a bit more oblique than that, especially when talking to amateurs, so I toned the question down and we had the following exchange:

Me: "How many stages will this go through?"

Him: "How do you mean – stages?"

Me: "Well... how many chapter headings?"

Him: "Chapter headings?"

Me: "Yes. I mean, if one were, to take a wild example, writing a book about this experience, how many sections do you think it would fall into?"

Him: "Sections?"

Me: "Yes."

Him: "Well... Look, I'm going to reverse the normal pattern here, and I am going to ask you a question."

Me: "Fire away."

Him: "Are you planning to write a book about this?"

Me: "It had occurred to me, yes."

Him: "I have to tell you I don't think you will have enough time to write a proper book about your cancer."

Me: "That's a bit unfair. You may be very good at giving people time limits when they are suffering from cancer, but I am not sure how much of an expert you are when it comes to saying how long it takes to write a book."

Him: "No, perhaps not, but I know how long it takes to get to grips with a subject as complex as cancer, especially when new research is going on the whole time..."

Me: "Research? No, no, no! You've got it all wrong! I'm not thinking of a text book! I don't want to produce a research work on cancer! I'm only thinking of a personal journal!"

Him: "Personal journal?"

Me: "Yes."

Him: "I don't quite..."

Me: "Well, writers quite like to turn their experiences into books, you know, and that includes their illnesses. You know, like Dennis Potter did with his psoriasis in The Singing Detective. But it's more fashionable these days to turn it into a first-person account, as John Walsh did."

Him: "And that's what you're going to do?"

Me: "I was thinking of it."

Him: "Well, good. That would be jolly good therapy, I would think."

It wasn't till later that I realised he had obviously never heard of John Walsh, which was just as well, because I wasn't thinking of John Walsh at all. I was thinking of John Diamond, the late Mr Nigella Lawson.

Mark you, it was an understandable mistake on my part. John Walsh has written a series of amiable autobiographies in each of which he has viewed the same lifespan through different prisms. Once as growing up with his favourite films; one as growing up Irish in London, and therefore also with Catholicism; once as something else quite different, I think, but I can't remember what. Once or twice a week in The Independent he continues an account of his life as a once-or-twice-a-week-in-The-Independent journalist. I would feel suitably downcast if John Walsh did really contract cancer, because sure as eggs are eggs, he would write a witty, sparkling, Catholic, Irish, film-loving book about his life with cancer, and get there before me, curse him.

The next time I met the oncologist, he asked me again if I had any questions.

Me: "Yes. Are you writing a book about cancer?"

Him: "Yes, I am. How on earth did you know that?"

Me: "It was something you said last time. When you were anxious about me writing a book. You said you didn't think I would have enough time."

Him: "Well, I have been working on mine for twenty years already, and it's not nearly finished..."

No competition there, then. And a bit of a clue. He doesn't think I have another twenty years left. But I never did either, even before I had cancer.

I see I haven't really come up with an idea for a book in this letter either. Next time, then!

Love, Miles

27 November 2007

Dear Gill,

On the Kennet and Avon Canal near where I live, at occasional intervals along the picturesque towpath, there is the odd bench to sit on. Not generally provided by British Waterways, but by relatives who wanted to provide a memorial to their late departed loved one. You know that, because they generally have engraved brass plates on them:

"TO ALAN BROWN, WHO LOVED THIS CANAL", "IN MEMORY OF ALAN BROWN, WHO LOVED THIS PARTICULAR SPOT", or even, in one uninspired case, "TO ALAN BROWN".

These benches are quite useful. I have often myself used them as a place to do up my shoes on, or to sit on and write notes of stuff going round in my head during a bike ride. I have often found that the mind goes into free wheel more easily on a bike ride than anywhere else in the world, and you get some really good thoughts up there on the saddle. Indeed, some of the ideas in these letters first saw the light of scribble on one of those benches.

So, if there is any money accruing from any of the books which I may have written as a consequence of any of these letters which I have written to you, between now and my death, I would like you to arrange for a bench to be bought and dedicated to me along the canal. And I would like the following wording to be carved on the bench, or, better, put on that small plaque: "IN FOND MEMORY OF MILES KINGTON, WHO HATED THIS SPOT, BECAUSE THERE WAS NEVER ANYWHERE TO SIT DOWN AND ENJOY IT FROM".

It doesn't matter where you put the bench, as long as there isn't one there already. I'm afraid this isn't an idea for a book, only an idea on how to spend the royalties. Oh, well.

Love, Miles

5 December 2007

Dear Gill,

When you've been diagnosed with cancer (a phrase I still can't think of a good euphemism for, even though everyone I meet can think of a bad one), one of the most annoying books in the world suddenly turns out to be 1,000 Places To See Before You Die.

Have you come across this? It's a fat American paperback which lists a thousand of the most remarkable sights in the world, natural or man-made, from canyons to cathedrals.

We have had a copy of this book knocking around our hall for a year now, on the shelves where we tend to keep the travel guides. It was certainly there before the oncologist drew on his little black cap and pronounced sentence. Until that moment I quite approved of the idea of the book. Here we all were, with twenty or thirty more years to live, and it was about time we started concentrating on using those fallow years to get to places we have been too lazy, poor or blasé to have a look at so far. 1,000 Places To See Before You Die. Ha ha. But very useful and full of ideas.

When I learnt I'd got cancer, the book suddenly looked very different. Threatening. Humourless. Grimly prescient. 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. Nasty. Fun-free. Evil.

"We know you are going to die," it seemed to say, "and we know you haven't got anything like enough time to see a hundred worthwhile places, let alone a thousand, so you're up against it, aren't you, pal? A lot of drastic choosing and travelling to do, haven't you? You're going to have to decide what to see next while you're already en route to the previous place. And every time you browse through the book, trying to make up your mind, you're wasting the time and chance to see somewhere. Get a move on, because while you sit there dithering... Oops – there goes the Taj Mahal!"

It would be immensely satisfying if I could round up a few fellow sufferers to mount a lawsuit against this preposterous volume, put together by one Patricia Schulz, and dubbed a "No 1 New York Times Bestseller", on the grounds that it caused intense suffering to those who are about to die and haven't a hope in hell of seeing all those places. Luckily for her, I have many enticing things to do with my remaining time; taking money from Miss P Schulz and then handing it all straight over to my lawyers is not one of them. Are not one of them. Are not two of them.

Having browsed grimly through "A Traveller's Life List", as la Schulz subtitles her remorseless catalogue of treasures, I am relieved to find that, were I to take this over-inflated travel magazine article seriously, I could do some crossing off the list already and reduce the number from a thousand to nearer nine hundred and ninety. Yes, I have been to one or two of Schulz's Sights already. Machu Picchu. Salisbury Cathedral. Wells Cathedral. The Schwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon. Loch Ness. The Moscow Underground... (Starting to run out now...)

Two of these I can even bracket together. In 1980 I was lucky enough to be taken by the BBC to Peru as the presenter of "Three Miles High", one of the programmes in the "Great Railway Journeys" series. Our trip passed through Machu Picchu at one point, and allowed me to see the Lost City of the Incas and the legendary craftmanship that fitted those great massive stones together so snugly, and all without the use of any adhesive.

"Is it not remarkable," said an expert to me as we stood and surveyed the remains, "that six hundred years ago another civilisation unknown to ours could construct something so brilliant?"

If he hadn't said it, I might have agreed with him.

As it was, the spirit of rebellion suddenly moved within me.

"No," I said. "Not really. At about the same time as they were building Machu Picchu, or even earlier, we in Britain had pretty much finished Salisbury Cathedral. Give me Salisbury Cathedral any day. It makes Machu Picchu look like a child's toy."

How smug I felt. And I was right, of course. The main reason that Machu Picchu looks so good, apart from its dramatic position, is that you don't expect people in the South American jungle to be building stonework like that six hundred years ago, certainly not up a mountain, and you don't expect it to be lost for centuries until American adventurer Hiram Bingham blinks in the middle of a wood, and realises he is surrounded by some nice old remains and that from now on Yanks won't have to go to Europe for all their historical kicks any more.

It's still pretty basic stuff, Machu Picchu.

Imagine if you were stumbling through the forests of Peru and came across Salisbury Cathedral standing there, whole and entire, brightly maintained, with a notice at the door saying: "While we do not charge for admission, we hope for a contribution of at least £5 from each person", then you would be entitled to say "Holy Moley", have a small nervous breakdown, clasp cold flannels to your forehead, phone everyone at home saying: "Look at this little photo I've just taken!", or whatever is your preferred reaction to joyous shock.

Salisbury Cathedral beats a full house, four queens, five aces and Machu Picchu. (It was stressed to me in Peru that Machu Picchu was not actually the only Lost City of the Incas. I was also taken to see a place called Sachsahuaman, which is full of similarly amazing stonework and, being much less frequented by tourists, is much more tranquil and atmospheric. Oddly, it is not nearly so remote as Machu Picchu, being almost within walking distance of Cuzco. It reminds me that in Wiltshire local people will always advise you against going to the full tourist horror of Stonehenge and urge you instead to visit Avebury, which is not quite so sensational a Stone Age site but more attractive and, being enmeshed in a village, much less like a museum site, and – hey! I wonder if there's a pattern here? Do you think there are enough places throughout the world which are as good as their more famous counterparts to justify a book on them? A book called A Thousand Places To See Before You Die Which Are Pretty Much as Good as Patty Schulz's Top Thousand and Not Half As Crowded? Just a thought...)

The odd thing is that I do live in Wiltshire myself and am barely an hour from Salisbury, yet I think I have been inside Salisbury Cathedral only once in my life. I have often seen it from the distance, and occasionally from close up, if you can ever properly see a cathedral from close up, and it really is the most extraordinary, floating, extra-terrestrial, perfect, fantastical stone space ship you could want. Yet I could only be bothered to go in it once. And that was while I still lived in London, and was just passing through Wiltshire!

That's the other thing they say, of course, that people who live nearby never go. It is legendarily rare to find a Londoner who has been to the Tower of London (and then only if taking a visitor there). I have in-laws called Keith and Belinda who live less than an hour's drive from Niagara Falls, and boy, are they sick to death with taking people to Niagara Falls. They couldn't care less if they never see the Falls again. When people come to stay, they now tell them: "Go and see Niagara Falls if you like, but don't expect us to come along and see the bloody thing!" (Things? Thing?)

There might be an idea for a series of books here, introducing people who live in a place what they should go and see. London for Londoners. The Billericay That Nobody Knows. The Liverpool That Nobody Likes.

Anything in this letter appeal to you?

Love, Miles

6 December 2007

Dear Gill,

I have just had a thought about the book outlined in my previous letter.

What about a small change to the title?

Instead of calling it A Hundred Things To Do Before You Die by Miles Kington, what about it calling it A Hundred Things To Do Before I Die by Miles Kington? Thus introducing an element of blackmail into the whole business. If Patty Schulz can do it, so can I. Just a thought.

Love, Miles

10 December 2007

Dear Gill,

I now realise that there is a strong possibility that my dog and cat might outlive me.

Less likely with the cat, who is fourteen and quite an old lady, even though she still behaves like a teenager. Only this morning she climbed on my lap while I was working, which was, as it always is, a) very sweet b) a bloody nuisance. She won't be around for much longer, I fear.

But our dog, Berry, is a healthy 10-year-old springer spaniel who has got at least another five years in him, probably more. I had always put to the back of my mind the thought of his final decline and death, which was bound to come when I was about seventy, especially if we finally had to have him put down.

Now, though, I see that I might be the first one to go, which puts things in a very different light.

He might not realise that I am going to die, for a start. He doesn't know about death. As I lie expiring, surrounded by people who got tickets for the event in time, how do I know that as I open my mouth and prepare to utter my carefully prepared and rehearsed last words, he may not burst in and demand to be taken for a walk?

And that my last words, after all that, will turn out to be: "Oh, for God's sake, not now, Berry!"

I have not mentioned him anywhere in my will, and yet I suppose he is a dependent of sorts. More than most, really. Should I not cater for him as well? If only to stop him asking me if I have got all my affairs sorted out?

"... To my dog Berry, who was the only one of my close ones NOT to ask if had got my affairs sorted out, I therefore in gratitude leave... Everything." Tempting.

And people seem to do well out of pet books. What do you think, in my case, of How to say Goodbye to a Dog (And How To Leave it All Your Money, If You Have To.)

It's an idea.

Love, Miles

17 December 2007

Dear Gill,

Whenever I attend someone's memorial service, and people make witty, anecdotal, tearful, movingly comic speeches by the great and the good in memory of the late departed, I am always struck by one notable absence among the great and the good.

The late lamented himself.

Or herself.

Wouldn't it be great, I think, to have a short contribution from the person in whose honour we are all gathered, so that we could hear him once again telling one or two of his favourite stories, making caustic remarks about the other speakers and generally reminding us of why we all miss him so much?

Or her?

They do it at awards ceremonies. If someone gets a top award and can't be there for the actual ceremony, they very often manage to get the winner to do a brief video or film clip, shot on location in Mozambique, lamenting their absence and very often saying something wittier and more cogent than if they had been up on the podium in person.

So why can't they do it at memorial services? Or even at funerals? Instead of the clergyman who obviously never knew the late lamented, would it not be possible to have the lamented doing a brief last appearance instead?

For the last two or three years I have been daydreaming off and on about how I could contrive to be present at my own service.

The answer is quite simple.

Make a video in advance of my farewell speech, to be shown on a monitor from the pulpit, or on a screen behind the stage, or wherever the best place would be.

I have already visualised the opening shot.

It is of me, smiling ruefully, and saying to camera: "Hello. I'm sorry I couldn't be here in person with you today..."

That much is definite. The rest of the script remains vague. I always swore I would get down to it one day, and I still haven't, which sums up the life of the freelance writer pretty well. "When he died, he was still working on his farewell speech..."

I once touched on this idea when I was having lunch with Douglas Adams. I didn't know Douglas very well, but I liked him a lot. We were having an argument about gravestones, which he said were a waste of time and a useless Victorian survival, and should not be continued with.

I said they didn't have to be useless. It was merely the fault of the lazy masons and undertakers that they had never kept up with the times.

"What do you mean by that?" he said.

"Well," I said, "gravestones still give out the same ludicrously rudimentary information that they did 200 years ago. Date of birth. Date of death. First names. Name of loved ones left behind. A pious message, perhaps. That was it. Obituaries have moved on. It's about time headstones did."

"Yes, but how...?"

"Easy," I said. "What you should install in a headstone is a small screen and and a ten-minute video of the guy's life. The stone itself gives the basic details, but if you want more than that, you push the little button which says 'Press Here For Life Highlights', and the screen lights up and you find yourself watching a ten-minute résumé of the man's life. Maybe it wouldn't be free. Maybe you would have to put a £1 coin in, to go towards grave upkeep."

Douglas thought this would be a very good idea, and that it might even give a new meaning to the word "grave-robber", meaning someone who broke into an ObitView device and took the cash.

ObitView? Gravestone News? AdieuView? Well, whatever the name, I can see a fortune waiting to be made from the idea and whoever makes it, it won't be me, and it won't be Douglas.

I wonder, as a matter of interest, how Douglas finally decided he himself wanted to be memorialised, and what sort of memorial stone guards his resting place. And what it says on it.

You have got more time than I have to find out, Gill, and better contacts too.

Love, Miles

15 January 2008

Dear Gill,

I went to see my oncologist in hospital earlier this week, and we talked about this and that, and the importance of catching cancer early, which I found a bit annoying as they had not caught my cancer early, but it turned out he was just filling in time and wanted to talk to me about something quite different.

"Miles," he said, which he only calls me when we have moved on to safe topics, "tell me, are you still writing your book? The book about cancer you mentioned before?"

"Yes," I said. "Well, I am still firing some ideas at my agent..."

"Ah!" he said. "So you have an agent, then?"

"Yes," I said.

"Good," he said, and then stopped.

"Is that all?" I said.

"Yes," he said.

Then he shook his head.

"No," he said. "Look, the thing is, I have been writing this book of mine on cancer for several years now, looking at all the new treatments that have come along, because I know a lot about cancer and I think I have got the material for a really good book about it. But I am not good about publishing books, and I don't know how to set about it."

"Well," I said, "it's the same for everyone, really. You get a good idea. You do some writing. You get an agent interested, and the agent then gets some publisher interested. . . "

"Hold on there!" said the oncologist. "You've missed out a vital bit of information there!"

"Have I?"

"Yes. You haven't mentioned the name of the agent."

"Oh. Sorry. What is the name of the agent?"

"I don't know," said the oncologist. "I only know about cancer. You're the one that knows about books and agents."

Slowly, a kind of greeny, dim light began to dawn. What was happening was that my oncologist was appealing to me for help with his book. He seemed to think that I might be able to help him get his book published. A diabolical sort of bargain was in the offing whereby he would advise me about cancer while in return I would...

"Look, Dr Benton," I said, "..."

"Call me David," he said.

"Is David your name?" I said, surprised.

He didn't seem like a David to me. He seemed a little doubtful himself.

"I'll just check," he said.

He turned to his desk and tapped away at his computer. This is one thing I have discovered this year about the NHS and, indeed, all hospital-based medicine nowadays: that the doctor feels he has to check everything with his computer and his database before he quite dare say or do anything. That little screen in the corner is the key to all he needs to know, as long as he can remember how to access it.

"Oh, dear," he said. "I think I've forgotten my password again. I had to change it before I went on holiday last time, and I keep forgetting what the new one is."

"David," I said.

"Yes?" he said.

"No," I said. "I am wondering if your new password might not be David."

"Oh, of course. Yes, it is," he said. "How on earth did you know that?"

"People quite often choose their own name for their password," I said. "It's very unsafe, but they do."

Having established that his name was David, Dr Benton now turned his attention back to the missing agent, and to try to establish a name for them as well, which he thought I had the key to.

"You see," he said, "if only I had the right agent, I think this book on cancer would be a winner."

There then followed five minutes of close fencing, in the course of which he as good as suggested that I put him in touch with you, and I as good as suggested that my doing so would endanger our relationship for all time.

"Have you not heard of the Euroclitic Oath?" I said, improvising desperately.

"Euroclitic? What's that?"

"It's the sacred oath which all writers have to sign with their agents."

"Like the Hippocratic Oath?"

"Oh, much more serious than that," I said. "It involves... "

I was about to tell him that it involved cutting your wrist slightly and then mingling your life bloods, until I realised that he would not find this at all impressive as doctors did that kind of thing all day long, often merely by accident.

"It involves swapping bank account numbers and exchanging vital financial fluids, and things like that," I said.

He looked revolted.

"Well," he said," do you think that if you consulted your agent, he might put me on to the right person?"

"She."

"What?"

"Not a he. A she."

"Your agent is a woman?"

I had an overwhelming temptation to say, "I'll check", turn to a computer in the corner and access a database to make sure you were a woman, but unfortunately I hadn't got a computer with me.

"Yes," I said.

"I see," he said.

I don't know what he meant by that.

That is how things stand at the moment. If you don't mind, I would rather not put him in touch with you. I am happy for you to get a bestseller on cancer published, but I would much rather it were by me than by my oncologist. Tell me you agree. And remember the old Euroclitic Oath which binds us so closely.

Love, Miles

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