The next Mayor of Marlborough is probably the first to list hang gliding in his hobbies.

It’s fitting because Marlborough was the birthplace of the sport in the UK and Coun Alexander Kirk Wilson, 65, flies with the Thames Valley Hang Gliding Club. He is also a driving tutor with RoSPA with which he has been involved for 20 years.

Lancashire born and brought up, he read politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford and later became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

He worked in industry although his final job was as bursar of a girls’ boarding school near Newbury.

His two grown-up sons went to Marlborough College and his late mother moved to the town to be near her grandsons and lived in Town Mill. Coun Kirk Wilson followed her to live in Marlborough.

A divorcee, his mayoress will be his long-time friend Julie Robinson. Coun Kirk Wilson is chairman of the kennet Community Minibus and he is on the committees of the Merchant’s House and Jubilee Centre.

Following his unanimous selection by town council colleagues on Monday Coun Kirk Wilson said: “We are on the cusp of many developments in the town.”

These included the formal invitation to 4 Military Intelligence Battalion to accept the freedom of the town, the opening of new allotments in Stonebridge Lane and of Stonebridge Meadow – recently purchased jointly by ARK and the town council – as an open area for townspeople to enjoy.

The deputy mayor will be Edwina Fogg who is probably the first who has also been mayoress, in 1985 and in 2009 when her husband Nick was mayor.

The mayor making ceremony takes place in the town hall on May 9.