James Milner is an Englishman who plays for the Manchester City club. He is in the starting 11 now and then.

Mostly, he is an industrious backup midfielder. With the emphasis on industrious. Supreme fitness seems to preoccupy him.

At a Euro 2012 tournament game, he famously ran 1.4 kilometers more (in excess of .86 miles) than any other player on the pitch.

And even with all that running, he completed only nine passes, leading a British soccer writer to characterize Milner as “A man very stubbornly doing lengths of a swimming pool while a water polo match goes on all around him.”

That episode, plus his brief remarks to journalists, led to the notion of James Milner as not a very bright guy.

Well, actually, a very dull guy.

And led to a fake Twitter account that is amusing.

It is entitled “Boring James Milner” and, on Twitter it can be found @BoringMilner

The posts, not his (we hope), are just as dull as can be imagined. And being dull is harder than you think.

It means never saying anything interesting. Never being funny. Being earnest without being at all intriguing.

Following the site is a guilty pleasure of more than 225,000 people, who apparently are amused at watching the author invent things so dull that they are, in fact, interesting or funny — especially when looking at Milner’s simple face.

Some recent examples.

“I’ve lost my spare key for my front door. Luckily I have a spare spare key that I can promote to spare key whilst I get a new spare spare key.”

“I asked Yaya if he got a knock. He said Yes. I said Are you disappointed to go off? He said What do you think? I said I think you are.”

“Manuel Pellegrini said we should all get an early night tonight, but Manuel Pellegrini doesn’t know how big my ironing pile is.”

“Bit disappointed with today’s result but really looking forward to getting home & giving the cutlery draw a long overdue audit.”

Dull? You bet. Most of us have to work at being that dull. (Or so we prefer to think.)

Richard Jolly, who writes for The National, did a piece today on how Milner actually is a useful player, irrespective of the magnitude of his dullness. Perhaps under-appreciated by City, who saw him have a hand in both goals in their 3-2 loss to Liverpool.

He deserves a place in England’s World Cup team, Jolly wrote, suggesting that he has become a sort of “national treasure” and calling him a “hugely underrated player”.

Certainly, most of the lads have not inspired as many smiles as has Boring James.