The Idler, Monday, July 11, 2011

Bizarre, brutal, unexplained

 

ONLY last Friday we were poking fun at Rebekah Brooks, British chief executive of News International, over the storm gathering about her scandal rag, News of the World.

 

Hardly had we gone to print when America-based Australian proprietor Rupert Murdoch closed it down. Yesterday the last edition hit the streets.

 

It's as bizarre as it's brutal as it's unexplained. The NoW was Britain's biggest newspaper by far. It seems to have still been profitable. It had been around seemingly forever – 169 years is a very long time.

 

Just what is still to come out in the phone hacking/police bribery allegations that is so embarrassing even Murdoch can't handle it?

 

The NoW has itself become a story every bit as lurid as its famous exposes over the years. It's weird.

 

Fish and chips

 

THE NEWS of the World was not everyone's cup of tea. Its exposes often had about them a disturbing prurience. They often seemed to involve entrapment rather than investigation, which is morally dodgy.

 

But – heck! – it was part of the landscape. London (or Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast and Dublin) won't be the same without it. What will they use to wrap the fish and chips?

 

It seems odd that one powerful individual should have the power, on a whim, to switch off a national institution.

 

Parallel

 

THE ROW in Britain over the News of the World in a sense parallels the debate here over regulation or otherwise of the media.

 

Britain's self-regulatory press complaints system (very similar to what we have here) just hasn't worked, everyone from the prime minister downward says. Something new needs to be put in place.

 

But absolutely nobody has in mind anything like our draconian Information Bill.

 

Waiting for war

 

MENTION last week of Joel Mervis's wonderful The Passing Show, that ran as a column for 50 years or more in the Sunday Times, struck a chord here and there.

 

Durban artist Hannah Lurie recalls a character whose mention always went with the contraction MAHFGR (May all his finesses go right).

 

Yes, that was Dr EbenezerBoneash, Headmaster of Skollypot.

 

Meanwhile, reader Don Porter has set off for the Balkans on a journey of Mervis rediscovery.

 

Mervis often had the lines: "I am sitting in Prmzl. Drinking slivovitz, waiting for a war to break out. It is a question of zinc. Gives Ossip Broz Skopl Topl a klep in noz."

 

The puzzling passage was repeated so often it began to make sense and became almost a cult. Any day now, Don will be in Slovenia where he plans to raise a glass or two of slivovitz and ask if anyone remembers Joel Mervis.

 

In his book, The Fourth Estate, Mervis explained the origin of it. Very late one night at a party in Johannesburg he overheard a heavily accented conversation in English between two gentlemen from the Balkans. He got talking to them and the piquancy of the moment stayed with him.

 

If the lines puzzled readers, they alarmed the Yugoslavian secret service. Yusip Broz was the real name of Marshal Tito, and Mervis was accused of using code to assist the Mihailovich underground in Yugoslavia.

 

Gives Ossip Broz Skopl Topl a klep in noz. None of it makes sense, I know – except to Passing Show afficionados.

 

 

Oranges and lemons

 

UNFORTUNATELY I was unable to go to last Monday's St Clements evening, where they did readings from Herman Charles Bosman. I'm told Pieter Scholtz gave some splendid renditions in a cultured Afrikaans accent – upmarket Bethulie with a hint of Oxford – and Spyker Koekemoer (aka Pat Smythe) did the same in tones of Lower Verkeerdevlei with a drizzle of Red Muscadel.

 

Between the two of them they apparently had the bosoms of the Berea bouncing merrily with mirth.

 

Tonight it's a threesome. Rick Andrew will read from his book, Confessing the Muse; Scholtz will read an edited version of his short story, Jacob's Smile; and Andrew Verster will read three short stories, Tokyo, Liberty and The Rio Carnival.

All of it washed down with a glass or two of claret. Life is pretty good.

 

Tailpiece

 

Office manager: "What do you charge?"   Temporary typist: "R600 a day."   Office manager: "I'll pay that with pleasure."   Temporary typist: "With pleasure it's a bit more."

 

Last word

Outer space is no place for a person of breeding. – Lady Violet Bonham Carter.