Jon Miller

Published Friday 22 August 2008 at 14:00 by Patrick Newley

Jon Miller was one of the original presenters of How, ITV’s hugely popular children’s educational programme, that managed to combine scientific questions with knockabout humour.

Produced by Southern Television from 1966-81, each episode was designed to provide answers to questions beginning with the word ‘How’ and the show began with the regular presenters - jokey Fred Dineage, thoughtful Jack Hargreaves, gadget-minded Jon Miller and Bunty James - all raising one hand and saying ‘How’.

Miller’s off-beat humour was first spotted in 1965 by Hargreaves, then Southern TV’s deputy programme controller, when he was looking for presenters for a pub-type TV quiz show. Miller was a guest on an April Fool’s Day edition of Southern TV’s children’s programme Three Go Round, where he demonstrated how Beatles wigs were supposedly made from the hairs of beetles’ legs. Miller dressed up as a mad scientist and was filmed in a laboratory shaving some plastic beetles’ legs. Shortly afterwards he was invited to join the first edition of How.

John Miller was born in Southend-on-Sea on July 14, 1921. He was educated at Bedales School, Hampshire, and went on to study photography at the Reimann School in London from 1939-41. During the war he served as an RAF ariel reconnaissance photographer.

In the late forties, he was a volunteer working on the Yugoslav Youth Railway construction project, after which he worked for the Zoological Society in London, where he was responsible for stocking the aquarium at London Zoo. This led to him travelling worldwide.

He gained a reputation as a respected naturalist and broke into television in the early sixties, appearing on programmes such as Southern TV’s Day by Day.

How brought Miller national fame, but the series came to an end in 1981, when Southern Television lost its ITV franchise. It was revived as How 2 in 1990, but only Dineage remained from its original presenter line-up.

Miller married Rota Hallerman in 1947. They had one son and two daughters. The marriage was later dissolved. In 1965, he married Cecily Power. They had two daughters.

He died on July 30, aged 87.