This was a
master
wordsmith
IT'S with great sadness that I learn of the death of Jack Shepherd-Smith, master wordsmith, former Idler and one of the most entertaining writers I have ever known.
Jack was writing the Idler's column back in the 1960s with a verve and humour that put him right up there with the best internationally – Punch, The Spectator, the New Yorker, you name it. This was sophisticated writing.
It was a time the James Bond books and movies were very much in vogue. James Bond, secret agent 007. It was also a time when the secrets of the Afrikaner Broederbond were beginning to leak, the sinister, secretive elite who were behind the National Party and apartheid.
Jack linked the two, introducing a character named Broeder Bond, secret agent Niks Niks Sewe. It was hilarious. A senior colleague once told me Jack was the only person ever to get him to fall out of bed in the morning, laughing.
Jack also brought the province close to civil war. He wrote about a beauty contest in Ladysmith which nobody won. The Ladysmith town council amplified the joke by calling a special meeting where a motion of condemnation of The Mercury was passed.
While Ladysmith fumed, the rest of the province rocked with laughter.
Things had settled down more or less when Jack wrote another piece about a Miss Lucky Legs contest in Ladysmith, won by the billiards table in the Royal Hotel.
Hostilities resumed. To this day people argue about whether it was the billiards table or the grand piano in the town hall that won.
Jack later became the first editor of Scope magazine, going into a prolonged skirmish with a government body called the Publications Control Board, which had the power to ban magazines (though not newspapers) for "indecent" content.
Jack would bring out issues with sensationally naked girls on the front cover, judiciously placed stars covering the "indecent" bits. The PCB would consider, then ponderously issue a ban – ensuring a sell-out at every sales point in the country.
Many remember Jack and Scope for the nipple stars and the skirmishes with the PCB, but actually Scope was far more than just a girlie mag. These were the days before TV. (Albert Hertzog, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, was still protecting us from the "bioscope in a little box"). Scope carried illustrated news from all over the world, the Vietnam War included, using some of the best international writers. It was serious stuff.
Jack went on to edit Pace magazine, then set up Style. He seemed to never really give up on wordsmithery. Perhaps he got his stamina from the early days when he was one of the pioneers of the Duzi canoe marathon, along with conservationist Ian Player.
His daughters, Izzy and Jo, and son, Jeremy, are themselves noted journalists, I suppose inevitable with a dad whose day-to-day conversation fizzed with enthusiasm for the craft and with humour.
Jack died yesterday aged 89. It was not just a good innings, it was a spectacular innings.
Tailpiece
A YOUNG lady is telling her friends in a café her idea of the perfect man.
"The man I marry must be a shining light among company. He must be musical; tell jokes; sing; entertain. And he must stay home at night."
Elderly waitress: "If that's all you want, get a TV."
Last word
Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was belief in facts.
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