My friend Tim Miller, who has died aged 87, was one of the behind-the-scenes architects of 20th-century London cultural life. In the 1960s he worked with Peter Cook at the start of Private Eye, the satirical magazine, and supported the foundation of Centrepoint, Britain’s largest homelessness charity. Film was his main calling, but he shied away from the red carpet. Instead he used his incisive intelligence and deep understanding of the world to guide other people – friends, students, artists, priests and ex-cons – towards their creative potential.
Born into an aristocratic family near Woodbridge, Suffolk, Tim was the younger son of Maj William Pitt Miller and his wife, Juliet (nee St Aubyn). Later he dropped the double-barrelled surname. After a stint in the Grenadier Guards, where he felt like a misfit, Tim settled in London. He was a founding shareholder of Private Eye Productions in 1963 and helped manage Cook’s rowdy Establishment Club, a magnet for the counterculture.
