SOB... Romancing the Stone, part 2

My father, may his memory be blessed, was certainly no racist. He was what used to be called a liberal before it became a pejorative appellation. I suspect he also might have been a member of the SA Communist Party.

Some people might argue that being a liberal and/or possibly a member of the SACP does not automatically disqualify one from being a racist. But I leave such debates (for the nonce) to David Bullard, aka the Bullfinch, and to Xolela Mangcu.

I write that I "suspected" he was a party member because he never said anything about it - it was not really the sort of thing one chatted about in the good old days in the beloved country. But one day, when I was about 15, so it would have been in the late sixties, the good ol' special branch turned up - two hefty but polite fellows - and proceeded to check the book cases and to rifle through the old man's papers.

The SB took away the manuscript of a book he had written with my mother about South Vietnam, where they had both lived in the early 1960s because my father, a pharmacist, had worked for the World Health Organisation.

The cops later returned the book, saying that they had thoroughly enjoyed it. Pity that publishers and cops didn't have the same tastes. But so it goes.

Be all that as it may, my dad did sometimes venture verbally into areas where these days angels might fear to tread. And one of the things I remember him saying was: "It's remarkable how the figures of the female members of the indigenous population have slimmed down. I really do believe that Oscar Wilde had it right."

He was referring to Wilde's famous aphorism that "Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life", which our Oscar might have borrowed from Ovid. In Book 3 of the Metamorphoses, the naughty Roman poet depicts a scene where "Nature in her genius had imitated art".

Of course my old man was taking a liberty with the word "art". He was referring to pictures of models wearing the latest fashions and even more, I think, given when it was, to the life-like but plastic mannequins that one saw in the windows of the department stores of yore.  

Wikipedia is also not very elevating in its explanation for the notion of life imitating art. Mostly it gives is a series of examples of life imitating movies - but I am not certain that movies are "art" any more than shop-window mannequins are.

Wikipedia tells us that "[i]t has been reported that the prevalence of CSI and other crime investigation TV shows have changed criminal behavior. For example, the use of bleach to destroy DNA evidence has increased, as a result. This theory is called CSI effect."

Or: "Astronomers who took a picture of the star V838 Monocerotis remarked that it seems to imitate Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night.

Or: "The release of the 2006 film Night at the Museum, which depicted the American Museum of Natural History in New York City as having its attendance increase dramatically at the end of the film, resulted in the real American Museum of Natural History's attendance increasing after the film's release. Christmas season attendance increased by 20 percent over the previous year."

I have been cogitating on such deep matters and such trivia because my attention was recently drawn to a story about the local ad industry and First National Bank.

It was a story close to my heart because it contained alleged sex, alleged romance, a little alleged fiddling (of a number of kinds) among the leading lights of our marketing and advertising community, accusations of "sleazy, blatant untruths that don't warrant a response" (these are always fun, I find) - and, not only all of those, but two bonuses.

The first is that I actually know - or knew - at least two of the cast (actually three of them if you count the reporter of the version of the story I saw). Second, we seem here to have a case of life imitating - well, if not art, then copying life itself (as I shall explain).

The story apparently emanates from that font of all the news you ought to know but don't (or something), Noseweek. But the version I have seen was on the Fin24 site, reported by Tony Koenderman, who used to be my boss on the Financial Mail before the flood. I won't insult him by saying that he taught me all I know, but he did teach me a little of the little that I know.

According to him, "[t]he ad industry is abuzz over an innuendo-filled article in Noseweek ... concerning the relationship between First National Bank brands director Derek Carstens and Jupiter Drawing Room Johannesburg CEO Renée Silverstone".

Apparently FNB's Carstens - who, Koenderman omits to mention, is the main man what counts when it comes to marketing the Soccer World Cup 2010 and in fact hangs out these days at the Fort Knox-like soccer HQ with Irvin Khoza and Danny Jordaan - our Derek has allegedly been "romancing" Silverstone for "several years". (If there's a movie, it'll be called Romancing the Stone 2.)

And he has allegedly appointed a certain ad agency, the appointment of which would allegedly help ensure Silverstone a "windfall" payment of R30-million to R50-million for her shares in the Jupiter Drawing Room.

(Don't ask me to explain how this deal was supposed to have worked because, notwithstanding it having been explained by the pellucid Koenderman, I'll be damned if I understand it.)

Needless to say, Carstens has said nothing (not to Koenderman anyway); Graham Warsop, the chairman of Jupiter, says the story is untrue; FNB says it's all codswallop; and Silverstone says, as I mentioned, that the allegations are "sleazy, blatant untruths that don't warrant a response".

I used to work with Silverstone - also before the flood - at a place called Grey-Phillips, Bunton, Mundel & Blake where I was (heaven help us all) a "marketing strategist". (People used to have a sense of humour in those days.)

And, if I remember correctly (for which there is no guarantee), I think I remember thinking that I would have liked to romance Silverstone myself. And, if I remember correctly, her former husband Dermot Magowan - referred to, rather sweetly, in the Noseweek article (according to Koenderman) as "McGogan" - also worked there. But I wasn't interested in romancing him (as best as I recall), though he was a mighty fine-looking chap.

Such inaccuracies, as Dermot's surname, and there is another (according to Koenderman), are being used as proof by Jupiter that the whole Noseweek article is not quite credible.

But c'mon chaps, it is Noseweek, after all. You don't want correct figures and surnames as well as hot stories - all for the cost of whatever-it-costs - do you?

Anyway, my childhood crushes and Dermot's correct surname are not the issue. The issue, it seems to me - besides of course whether Carstens was a fool for love - is whether we have here life imitating art. Or is life imitating life? And by this I mean to ask: are we looking at Bob Aldworth Mk. 2?

For the late Aldworth, the CEO of Barclays (as FNB was then), had, you will recall, a dalliance with his then marketing lady, Sandra van der Merwe - and, well,  I trust it was a great deal of fun at the time, but it got him into a great deal of trouble. It was, genuinely, what the spiritual types call a "life-changing experience" (for Bob), and not one that he ultimately came to enjoy.

Carstens, as I have intimated, is an important person and one pivotal to the 2010 jamboree, on which we have all pinned our hopes for a happy future. I just hope that the cops - or, even worse, his fellow senior colleagues - aren't going to be visiting his home or office to look through the bookcase or fiddle with his papers.

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