It also served as a reminder of an era when Wellington was a far livelier and more stimulating place than it is now – a city full of rumbustious, convention-defying individuals who lived life at 100 miles an hour and didn't bother with seat belts, metaphorically speaking.
I can’t claim to have known Jones well, but our orbits overlapped from time to time. I only once went to his big house on the hills overlooking the Hutt Valley, but I drank with him in his office on several occasions and lunched with him a couple of times. All a long time ago, I should add, and always at his invitation.
I also recall quite a few phone conversations. It was always him ringing me, never the other way around, and it was usually at a time when I had more important things to get on with, like getting a paper out. Jones loved to talk.
I remember reading years ago about a court case he was involved in. He was often caught up in litigation of one sort or another and I think this one involved a property purchase that had turned sour over problematical air conditioning.*
At one point Jones was in the witness box being questioned by counsel for the other side. He was challenged for supposedly not knowing about some detail that was in contention and replied to the effect that he was far too busy to be on top of every little thing relating to his property investments.
I remember thinking, “Yeah, right”. During the period in dispute, he was often on the phone to me, at some length and never about anything important. In other words he gave the impression of having plenty of time on his hands. I suspect the truth was that the finicky minutiae of business bored him. Media and political gossip was far more interesting.
Jones had a love-hate relationship with journalists. He was endlessly, acerbically critical of them, but enjoyed their company – or at least those he respected, or saw as being potentially useful to know. I think he phoned them when he was bored or felt like an argument.
“Useful to know” ... I think that was central to Jones’ personality. He liked to cultivate people he perceived as being influential. These included politicians (especially politicians), sporting names, columnists and editors. They appeared to fall in and out of favour at Jones’ whim, and in line with their perceived importance at any given time.
Political compatibility wasn’t a requirement. He was as close to some left-wing politicians as he was to those on the right. He befriended leftie journalists too, such as the Stuff columnist Virginia Fallon, who wrote a generous tribute to him after his death. He would phone her and bait her, she recalled, but she couldn’t help liking him, despite Jones embodying many of the things she raged against.
Jones was also a name-dropper. He liked to remind you of all the important people he was in touch with. I found it odd that someone so famous seemed to find it necessary to do this, but he was not the only prominent person I’ve known with this quirk.
He could sometimes be seriously unpleasant to deal with – a bully, not to put too fine a point on it. Someone close to Jones once explained to me that his famous displays of irascibility were attributable to Addison’s disease, a hormone disorder for which he took medication. His staff recognised the warning signs and would keep their distance when his mood changed.
The flip side was that when he turned on the charm, he was affable, amusing and hard not to like. He was also extremely generous toward worthy causes and not the least bit interested in grandstanding about it or earning public applause.
I saw Jones’ less appealing side when he contributed columns to two papers I was involved with (first the Dominion, later the Evening Post). Jones was a columnist for various papers at different times and it always ended badly. Either Jones would spit the dummy or editors would decide that publishing his column wasn’t worth the hassle of constantly arguing with him.
He regarded his words as sacrosanct; so impeccably crafted that no ignorant and impertinent sub-editor had any right to touch them. Even a minor change to bring his punctuation into line with the paper’s house style – the sort of intervention all other columnists accepted without a murmur – would cause him to erupt with rage.
The truth is, he wasn’t quite the writer he thought he was. At his best he was witty, perceptive, outrageously provocative and totally original in the way he saw things. He was a contrarian through and through, but his syntax – the way he constructed his sentences – was highly idiosyncratic and often clumsily tortuous.
He also bristled at any restraints placed on him for legal reasons. Several times he offered to indemnify the paper against any legal action that might result from his columns. If he was prepared to pick up the costs of court proceedings and pay any resulting damages, he reasoned, what possible problem could there be? He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) see that giving him a free hand would hopelessly compromise the editor’s autonomy and independence.
His offer of indemnity illustrated what I believe was a crucial point about Jones. He could afford to take risks that other people could never contemplate. His wealth made him bullet-proof.
As it happened, he was the cause of the only big defamation case in my journalism career that directly involved me as a named party. Time has slightly blurred my recollection of events, but in essence it arose from a column Jones wrote for the Dominion claiming that Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, the leader of the coup that deposed the legitimate Fijian government in 1987, had repeatedly failed his School Certificate examinations while at Wellington College.
It was classic Bob Jones mischief – mischief was one of the defining qualities of his public life – but it obviously stung Rabuka. He sued for defamation (as I recall, the amount claimed was $1 million) and as editor of the Dom at the time, I was named as second respondent.
The proceedings dragged on for years and descended into pure farce. The case turned on whether the Fijian High Court had jurisdiction, which in turn hinged on whether the offending edition of the paper was available in Fiji. When it turned out that the only copy they could find was in the library at the New Zealand High Commission in Suva, Rabuka’s lawyers sent someone to sit in the library all day and see whether anyone looked at it. Four people did – so if Rabuka was defamed at all, it was only to those four visitors to the High Commission library. With its languid tropical setting, it was the stuff of comic novels.
I think the case eventually fizzled out for lack of interest. Certainly no one ever came for me, which must have disappointed Jones. It would probably have appealed to his sense of humour to see an editor hauled through the courts over something he had written.
* An earlier version of this blog post referred to a different court case in which Jones gave evidence. On reflection I realised I had confused two different and unrelated proceedings.
Karl du Fresne, a freelance journalist, is the former editor of The Dominion newspaper. He blogs at karldufresne.blogspot.co.nz from where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
This piece certainly contrasts with that of the 'other Bob', Bob Brockie, who you wrote about so feelingly recently and who died one day earlier than Jones. You have captured Jones well; not only was he a bully, but a malicious one as well. I can recall his 'Withy watch' where he spent many hours and letters excoriating a marine engineer who dared to comment on topics that Jones thought were beyond the man' s purlieu. Yet that didn't stop Jones from operating in a similar vein. Despite much fulsome commentary from some, I retain a more sour memory, and had the dubious pleasure of being at Naenae College with Jones, where he was a general nuisance and a mocker of those who did not fit his view of the world.
Jones TDS on his blog site was interesting. Apparently Trump had trumped him on some property deal, hence the extreme TDS.
So I'm told.
Yes a very colourful figure who will be missed, despite his faults,
His wit and sense of humor was great.
I have two of his books that I read and re-read:-
"Letters" (I have a signed copy) and
"Degrees for Everyone" - an excellent witty satire.
Many of Bob's actions were dubious and would lead to serious trouble today. I seem to recall he landed a punch on a Dutch motel owner who chased Jones for departing without paying, not realising who Jones was and that adequate payment was assured.Then he punched the reporter who chased him to a fishing haunt using a helicopter. There was a motorcycle cop in Wellington, about the only one bold enough to stop gang members. He made the mistake of stopping Bob and
brought upon himself lengthy court action. An alarm installer overcharged and Bob pursued him through the courts. I seem to recall another case against a gardener, possibly re poisoned plants..With his wide experience and reading of everything and shrewd observation of human nature he was able to write convincingly in wide fields. One of his comic novels is about business men who set up a ship brothel at the South Pole. He makes observations about the them and us relation between base staff attached to highly prized local members of the opposite sex, and those not. Seemed imaginative but on RNZ an investigation into a mystery death at the American base revealed exactly such tensions. Then there was the notorious newspaper contribution praising the sexual attributes of Asian women, which ended his articles. He also told of a time when he took over concocting newspaper horoscopes from a friend; proved very acceptable. After the stoush with Air NZ for not listening to the safety message for the thousandth time, he was refused access to the airline. I do not know how that ended, but I bet management were not enamoured of the staffer involved.
I was looking forward to the court case brought by the female maori activist who claimed to have been maligned. But presumably consideration of possible cancellation in the form of boycott of his empire prevailed and the case was ceded. It should be recognised annually as the anniversary of the death of humour in NZ. Despite his ability to recognise deception and rort, he generally took a soft line on maori, presumably for the same reason. Apparently he persisted to write longhand. Many of his stock expressions were dated and very recognisable as his style. He referred to wets, buggers etc, 1960s style. I emailed him once or twice in support of some posts. The reply was very obviously from him personally.
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