Tom Scott farewells Bob Jones

Newsroom

21-05-2025

I detested Bob Jones for many years. My loathing had its genesis in the run-up to the 1975 election when Bob was the brains and financial brawn behind billboards mushrooming across the capital depicting Labour leader, the able, affable and unfailingly courteous Bill Rowling as a timid mouse. It was a malicious propaganda campaign that contributed hugely to the landslide victory of National's coarse, unfailingly belligerent Rob Muldoon.
Back then, Bob's older sister Pat, a vivacious, impassioned Labour Party activist and her husband, the political cartoonist, Bob Brockie, whose insightful and delightfully eccentric work I had admired for years, threw lavish parties in their elegant home in the Wadestown hills. They were the Capital's answer to the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port. Labour Party brahmin, Treasury mandarins, trade union apparatchiks, judges, barristers, academics, actors, poets, potters, painters, leading feminists and current affairs television stars like Ian Fraser, Simon Walker and Brian Edwards mingled freely sipping Chateau Cardboard, nibbling potato chips dribbling onion dip and swapping the latest Muldoon horror stories. These gatherings of media elites and liberal intelligentsia were the stuff of National Party nightmares – it was exactly what they secretly suspected.
At theses soirees, Bob Brockie would take me aside and sing his brother-in-law's praises, insisting that I would like him when I met him. And so it proved to be in 1979, when our paths finally crossed at a cartoon exhibition held in the foyer of a tower-block on Plimmer Steps that I now suspect Bob owned and lent to the organisers rent-free. I sported a flaming-red lumberjack beard and had a ginger Jimi Hendrix Afro to disguise my receding hair that wasn't fooling anyone – least of all Bob. He said, 'You're losing your hair, old man, and you're fat!' I told Bob that next time I drew him I would make him look even more like PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, who he uncannily resembled.
We got on famously after that and I was often invited to Friday afternoon drinks in his company offices on Lower Lambton. Festooned with vibrant Australian modern art and staffed with leggy blondes they were alluring, inviting places. Bob always occupied a vast corner office with views of Parliament in one direction and the harbour in another. Clutching a glass of red wine filled precariously to the brim, Bob paced back and forth, like a caged big cat in a zoo, over spotless pale-cream carpet, which was unnerving in and of itself, all the while regaling the usual suspects, without pause or ever seeming to draw breath, with stories that had no discernible beginning, middle or end. Another frequent attendee, private radio's gravel-voiced Barry Soper, called this giving Bob a good listening to.
Along with QCs and captains of industry, there was always a smattering of MPs. National's Venn Young and Max Bradford were regulars, as were Labour's Mike Moore and Jonathan Hunt. A fussy bachelor, Hunt was not remotely funky or cool, but Bob knew he was lonely and included him out of the kindness of his heart. National's wickedly funny Paul East once observed that if you placed a tape-recorder under Jonathan's bed and played it back next morning all you would hear would be the soft, delicate rustle of toffee papers.
If you ran into Bob on Lambton Quay around lunchtime, hungry or not, he would drag you off for more listening sessions at Asian restaurants tucked down backstreets and up narrow flights of stairs. Striding ahead, he would loudly scold pedestrians for wearing sunglasses on the top of their heads or for wearing baseball caps back to front. Over lunch he would berate any diner within earshot for clicking a biro or talking into a cellphone.
Early on I had no reason to report on Bob in my Listener columns, but in 1983, disgusted with the National government's wage and price freeze and authoritarian ways, he formed the New Zealand Party with the express intention of removing his old chum Rob Muldoon from office. This left me no option but to cover him. He was great copy, amusing and disarmingly candid to the point where the news media often had to protect him from himself.
Bob invented Fake News long before it became a thing. After Muldoon called the snap election in 1984, the NZ Party swung into action and selected an impressive raft of candidates. Bob allowed television news crews a quick peek from the door into their campaign headquarters in downtown Wellington – it resembled the Houston space flight control centre on steroids. Gorgeous women sat at clacking keyboard and flickering screens while fax machines and printers buzzed and hummed. Bob told me later that computer companies renting office space from him were induced to provide the electronics and he provided the women. It was an elaborate ruse designed to demoralise National and it worked. Their normally well-oiled machine corked a hamstrung morale and discipline crumbled. David Lange's Fourth Labour Government romped into office. Despite getting 12 percent of the vote and contributing to National's crushing loss, the NZ Party failed to win a seat.
Disheartened, down but not out, Bob threw everything into the 1985 Timaru by-election occasioned by the death of Labour's long-serving MP, Sir Basil Arthur. Bob campaigned tirelessly on behalf of his impressive candidate, Timaru surgeon Dr Bill Greenslade. Covering the by-election, I attended a rowdy lunchtime speech Bob gave standing on a trestle table in the smoko room of the local freezing works. Taking questions from the floor Bob was asked by a burly slaughterman if New Zealand's problems stemmed from our short, three-year Parliamentary term, meaning economic policy changed all the time, and as a result 'interest rates went up and down like a whore's drawers'. 'Can I just correct you there,' grinned Bob, 'trust me on this, whores don't wear drawers!' Deafening applause, the stamping of boots on concrete and hearty laughter rolled on for ages. Despite running the best campaign, saturation advertising and Bob's noisy, colourful presence, the NZ Party came a distant third and went quietly into recess.
Bob spent more and more time living in Australia after this, and it felt safe to venture down Lambton Quay again without having your heart in your mouth. In the mid-80s I was taken aback meeting him when he emerged from a cloud of pipe smoke opposite Parliament. Off my guard and not thinking straight I foolishly mentioned that I was heading to Sydney in a few weeks. At warp speed he asked me if I had booked accommodation. Slow on the uptake, I shook my head. Bob swooped, and insisted that I stay with him. It seemed churlish to refuse such generosity even though I knew it could shorten my life. Bob was temporarily between wives, concubines, consorts and companions so there was just the two of us rattling around in his grand, Italianate Vaucluse mansion that wouldn't have looked out of place on the shores of Lake Como. Enjoying fabulous views down the barrel of the harbour it had a tennis court, a swimming pool, sauna, gym, huge library and an imposing Baronial dining room.
Bob woke me early the first morning, insisting that I accompany him on a long brisk walk over the ridge of the peninsula to Bondi Beach. It was exhausting. In my sweat-drenched, lactic-acid induced delirium I swear I saw Ayers Rock at one point. Despite being a Saturday morning lots of building sites were in full swing. Māori carpenters and brickies spotting Bob downed tools and rushed to the fence to greet him like he was a rock star. Bob chatted away happily, solicitously asking them what part of New Zealand they were from, and who they thought would win the All Blacks vs Wallabies test that afternoon. Bob had invites to the corporate box of former Wallaby great, Nick Farr Jones. We drove there in his gleaming blue Jag, a nightmare journey with Bob honking the horn so continuously it became one long siren, all the while cursing 'wet bastards' – other drivers whose only crime was to observe the speed limit. When traffic backed up at intersections, Bob unhesitatingly crossed the centre line and drove on the wrong side of the road, shooting through on red if need be. His driving made Toad of Toad Hall look like the Queen Mother. It was a huge relief to get to the grounds in one piece, but the drama wasn't over. Bob got into a loud argument with another guest, a comprehensively pissed High Court Judge, punched him in the face, and we were asked to leave.
The next morning Bob was in a state of high panic, not through any remorse over decking an elderly member of the judiciary but because he had invited Wallaby first five eight, Michael Lynagh and former British heavyweight boxing champion, Joe Bugner, to dinner that night. I offered to cook a roast if he went shopping for the ingredients. Bob consented and I sent him off with a long list and he returned two hours later excited as a toddler who has just seen his first Santa Parade. 'TOM, YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS! THEY HAVE AISLES WITH FOOD ON EITHER SIDE AND TROLLIES THAT YOU PUSH DOWN AND FILL UP AS YOU SEE FIT. IT'S AMAZING!' I am not making this up.
Along with a leg of lamb, garlic, rosemary, pumpkin and sweet potatoes, Bob proudly brandished a hand-cranked coffee-grinder half wood, half blue and white, Delft porcelain with a built-in barometric pressure gauge, demanding loudly to know, 'WHY DO I HAVE TO THINK OF EVERYTHING? WHY IS IT ALWAYS LEFT TO ME TO BUY THIS STUFF?' I had no answer and got on with preparing the meal, which was a triumph.
I sat next to Lynagh, a lovely bloke, who just the day before had lost a test match to the All Blacks. Lynagh recounted the nightmare of being stalked all afternoon by the great Michael Jones. Lynagh said you only had to be tackled once by Jones and you never wanted to repeat the experience. As a consequence, whenever he saw the All Black flanker bearing down on him he shovelled the ball on blindly, wildly, and willy-nilly to his outside backs, like it were a live grenade, leaving them to deal with the rampaging All Black Number 7.
After dinner we retired to a smoking room, settled down on leather sofas and Bob told Joe Bugner, a mountain of a man who had once gone 15 rounds with Muhammed Ali in a challenge for the World Heavyweight Crown in Kuala Lumpur, that his problem was that he had been a coward in the ring. Joe took exception. 'What are you calling me?' Ignoring the hurt and menace in Joe's voice, Bob calmly repeated the claim. 'You heard me. You were a coward in the ring.' Joe angrily demanded a retraction. Bob said it again. Joe rose out of his chair. Lynagh, who been through enough the day before, shrank into his, leaving me to separate host and guest if they came to blows. 'DON'T HIT HIM, JOE! ITS NOT WORTH IT!' I begged, 'EVEN IF YOU MISS, THE WIND BURNS WILL KILL HIM AND YOU'LL SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE IN PRISON!' Joe laughed and sat down. Bob moved onto another topic and the moment passed.
His passing brings back memories of the death of legendary, trail-blazing broadcaster Neil Roberts, another charismatic rogue with a pirate's charm. The former head of TVNZ died from cancer in 1988. A bunch of us, including Bob, flew up from Wellington for the funeral staying in the same hotel we gathered the night before in Bob's suite for drinks. But instead of giving Bob a good listening to we listened to TVNZ chief political reporter, Richard Harman's moving account of his final hospital visit to his old friend, leaning over his wasted body, pressing his ear close to Neil's lips to hear his last whispered words. I wish I could tell you what those word were, but Bob, who was in serious attention deficit at this juncture, erupted angrily. 'OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, HARMAN! WE ALL LIVE! WE ALL DIE! GET OVER IT!'
Bob's death, while a shock, was not entirely unexpected – for most of his life he burnt millions of candles at both ends. There was no one else like him and there will never be anyone like him again, proof, if any were needed, that God doesn't make the same mistake twice.
Postscript by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias: Jones features in this literary section as the author of 23 credited books – but his finest work was the 24th, published by National Business Review founder Henry Newrick in 1974, never available in bookstores, a private edition of 300 copies, titled The First Twelve Months: A study of the achievements of the Third Labour Government in 1973. In his later book Memories of Muldoon, Jones writes, 'The launch took place in a Wellington auditorium with about 250 guests, including prominent citizens such as poet Sam Hunt, abortion lobbyist Dr Erich Geiringer, political cartoonists Tom Scott and Bob Brockie, current affairs interviewer Brian Edwards, and of course the TV news cameras, radio stations and other journalists, all there expectantly. TV host Selwyn Toogood acted as MC.' Toogood introduced Rob Muldoon, then Leader of the Opposition, to make a speech. 'Rob assured the audience he had read it from cover to cover, and congratulated me on an outstanding literary effort.' The book was then displayed – revealing that all the pages were blank. 'A great roar of delight came from the audience. Henry explained the book would be available for sale on that evening only. What followed was a frenzy as guests all but fought one another to buy copies. People were buying five or six at a time then queuing for our signatures…'