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
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