The late Miles King­ton was one of those people who could fash­ion amuse­ment seem­ingly without bat­ting an eye­lid. Here he is in the Times explain­ing why he could never make it as a reporter:

I got caught up in the June 1980 mil­it­ary coup in Bolivia. There had been TV crews wait­ing in La Paz for a coup for months but they had all got bored and had departed.

A week later, when the coup came, the only TV crew in town was ours, and we were there to film rail­way engines.

We were quite lucky to get the first flight out three days later.

When we landed at Lima air­port, the first eye­wit­nesses to reach the out­side world, I was approached by an eager Per­uvian who wanted to know every last detail of what I’d seen, so obli­gingly I told him the full story.

As he rushed away I was approached by our cam­era­man, Nick Lera, who had already sent his news film of the coup back to London.

“You’ll never make a reporter, King­ton,” he said. “That man you were talk­ing to is the Reu­ters man in Lima. He’s got your story now.”

The pity of it…