Remembering the Uncontainable Bob Jones
John Bowie
Bob Jones. It is such an ordinary name, a ‘nothing to see here’ one, yet attaching to a man so extraordinary in so many ways.
But Bob, as those who always knew him before the honorific interfered, was a character almost undefinable by most standards and one of New Zealand’s most idiosyncratically stirring heroes.
I’ve orbited his gravitational field for half a century,, first encountering him in 1975 when, as a university student on a labouring job I had committed the sin of dropping the foreman’s prized wrench into freshly poured concrete. Both the wrench and my job sank without trace.
Needing work I turned to my journalism background to write a modest tome on investment and politics, with a rather feisty opening chapter on the failures of the …. Labour government (after all, a 24 year old knows these things). I requested an interview with Bob to talk property and, in typical fashion, he wrote a fulsome piece on the subject himself. Enjoying my introduction, he also suggested I get Rob Muldoon to prepare a foreword.
I did. And so did Rob Muldoon.
The result was a booklet sold via mail with the first print run of 2000 copies selling in a few weeks – of Bob’s commercial magnetism, aided by a little political theatre and publicity, including references to the book in Parliament, a front page NBR article, an interview at my mother’s Karori home for Brian Edwards’ ‘Gallery’ programme and a reading from the introduction by Muldoon at the Victoria University Student Union resulting in his being removed under Police escort.
Such is the life in the Bob Jones orbit.
Friendship with Bob was less a steady state than a quantum phenomenon – you could be simultaneously in and out of favor, like Schrödinger’s drinking buddy.
As one mutual friend observed, it resembled a do-si-do where you circled in, then out, then back in again, presumably depending on whether you’d recently committed such unforgivable sins as wearing grey shoes or clicking a pen in his presence.
I subsequently worked with him, most recently on a publishing enterprise and as lawyer acting on some smaller property purchases in Wellington following the 1987 sharemarket crash and in entertaining defamation-related efforts and a nuisance action involving a middle aged female ‘stalker’.
Hardscrabble Beginnings
His journey from Naenae a hardscrabble but happy state house to business success and his magnificent mansion and gardens built as a young success-story magnate is well-documented, written with Horatio Alger references. But what made Bob genuinely fascinating wasn’t the billions or the books but the bewildering array of interests and contradictions that made up the man.
Here was an art, garden and book-loving pugilist who famously punched Reporter Rod Vaughan (and later offered to pay double his fine for the privilege of doing it again), who entertained and enthralled at every turn.
But he remained good humoured about that incident, even recording a video of Vaughan punching him at his front door for the journalist’s retirement from TVNZ
He could be irascible, infuriating, and absolutely impossible to pigeonhole. One minute he’d be railing against the “tosh” of religious instruction -he once docked his daughters’ school fees to protest it- the next he’d be giving up his beloved fly fishing on the grounds of animal cruelty, lamenting that “they’re bloody well fighting for their lives, of course they put up a fight,” delivered with a desk-thumping gusto that could rattle the crockery
He funded legal campaigns for the wrongfully imprisoned in the Teina Pora case. He supported women’s refuges after being shocked by stories of domestic violence and in particular its effects on children, and handed out scholarships to daughters of refugees who filled his office foyer with hope and gratitude and went on to become doctors, lawyers, engineers.
Right wing reactionary? Really?
Those who saw him as a right-wing, racist, misogynist were those who not only didn’t know him, but didn’t get him either. The failed attempts to strip his knighthood for his suggestion of a Maori Gratitude Day reflects on the woeful wokeness that created the emetic and clueless miserabilists who were ignorant of many things, including his work with oppressed and victimised segments of our society, particularly women and children.
He was a person whose generosity to family, friends and causes were many – but recognition for them was verboten.
He threatened one hospital organisation overseas to whom he had made a major financial contribution and who had supported a former partner that their relentless requests to recognize his generosity could be met by erecting a 50 metre, bronze statue of himself at the gate.
Such was the nature of the man. Action, private support and not a little piss-taking on the way through.
He offered to pay my legal fees when I was sued by Russian oligarch Sergey Grishin in 2021, courtesy of Simpson Grierson and and a Judge who favoured the Oligarch, a very nasty piece of work. Grishin, like all good Oligarchs, is now blessedly dead in a suitably mysterious and painful way.
Political Paradox
His political relationships were paradoxical, particularly when he effectively levered his friend Rob Muldoon from office. His friends were from both sides of the House. Many enjoyed his company and friendship, afternoon-turning-into-evening-turning-into-late evening drinks at the office – and funds.
As with many of his interests, his interest in New Zealand politics was intense. He knew all the Prime Ministers apart, he told me, from Norman Kirk who he had scant regard for and whose name he had put on his car registration papers in Sydney, resulting in council fines being sent to Parliament Buildings, 1 Molesworth Street Wellington. Kirk loathed him for the prank.
Despite helping to topple Rob Muldoon by founding the New Zealand Party he maintained affection for the man and his decency and took Dame Thea to lunch annually until her death in 2015.
Anyone who wrote a book ‘New Zealand the Way I Want It’ is hardly a passive observer.
The New Zealand Party was in many ways a watershed movement in New Zealand that created a fervour for freedom and opportunity that was contagious, but the charisma and barnstorming campaigning that saw the party siphon 12 percent of the vote came from Bob.
Focused on individual rights, reduced bureaucracy and enterprise the Party’s policies were liberal, including such matters like homosexual law reform, which duly arrived under the Lange government.
His intense interest in politics had him befriend many politicians who, like former Labour leader Mike Moore, became lifelong friends.
He was friendly with Helen Clark, imploring her to dump the Skyhawk squadron for their expense and pointlessness and taking considerable credit for her move in doing so.
His anti-military and anti-war stance was lifelong and impassioned. As a schoolboy at Naenae college he was effectively court martialed for refusing to join the school cadets and their “childish marching” charade. Attempts to force him to join were rebuffed by himself and his mother, who shared the combative streak.
The contrarian attitude of an original thinker who was his own man was set in stone even as a schoolboy.
He helped fund different political parties, never one to slavishly follow National, as many would believe, saying they were largely lacking vision and acting as a ‘mind-the-shop’ types.
He would rather a National politician as a neighbour, he said, but a Labour politician as a dinner guest.
No Punches Pulled
More recently I joined the inner circle to help develop his entertaining and highly-read blog, No Punches Pulled, alongside his now Lisbon-based son Chris and to publish his last book, “Four Comic Novellas”, a somewhat testing adventure I’lll admit, but lightened by engaging afternoons with the author during the tortuous journey to publication.
His blog needed redesign and updating but it could not be disrupted. Without a hint of publicity drew a vast and engaged audience. It was his outlet and one that informed, entertained and mused upon anything and everything from the ‘work from home’ racket” (his last entry) to legal, economic, political and social issues, including his frequent takes on the ‘Maori wonderfulness’ mindset preoccupying the country.
Bob was a frequent contributor to my investment newsletter “Keynote”, during the 1970s and 1980s. When that publication became part of the New Zealand Financial Review published by NBR founder Henry Newrick, I started the Rich List and Bob was happy to provide assistance on that topic too. Both the List and Review were later sold to Barry Colman.
His writing output was prodigious, having published some 26 books including some of the best selling non-fiction books in New Zealand.
His 1980 book “Jones on Property” remains a standard for many property investors written with his trademark tales and insights, including high praise. One US reviewer described it as “The absolutely best book on real estate investing ever”.
His book of ‘Letters’, including from myself, were vastly entertaining as he demonstrated his huge, comedic side, but also his generosity and understanding to bureaucratic absurdities. Writing to Ron Brierly he adopted the persona of a “gravely concerned shareholder” while owning just a single share, and crafted letters that brilliantly satirized corporate communication while demonstrating his keen understanding of absurdist humor.
Humour Unbounded
His humour and ability to deliver knockout blows to bureaucratic and political absurdities knew no bounds. Despite Maori friends and family he mocked the endless ‘Maori wonderfulness’ that preoccupies the media and public life. He recoliled at the embarrassing nonsense of a country apparently sinking beneath the weight of road cones.
He pointed out the nonsense of crazy rules and regulations, working from home ‘rackets’ and other wastefulness and nonsense.
Religion, of course, came in for frequent mocking, indicating the temerity of a God who would destroy cathedrals with earthquakes and the like.
His pranks and humour were legendary, and often extensively staged.
In his earlier days he helped his best mate the late Tony Dominik, then chief reporter at ‘Truth’, to write the horoscopes on life, love and health for readers. It opened the way for vast entertainment, highlighting his cynicism over such mystical beliefs.
His blank pages publication on his ‘study of the achievements of the Third Labour Government’, was a classic.
His contempt for wine and art snobbishness was frequently a point of fun. An art event at a gallery saw oohs and aahs over printing offcuts or smeared ink, well framed.
He included my name along with other friends in the 1977 ‘Citizens for Carmen’ mayoralty campaign in Wellington, leading to a difficult conversation with my then employer Crown Solicitor Jim Larsen. Better Carmen, of course, than the current incumbent.
When a group of Chambers suspected it was Bob’s cigarillo and pipe smoking that was wafting into their offices he commenced an elaborate scheme to reveal the offenders who were photographed as cigarette-puffing mice gathered around a wine bottle. Their numbers included gay mice and a letter from his late friend and criminal lawyer Greg King came from the Gay Rodents Association threatening legal action should traps be set to kill the offenders.
Such was the way of a man who couldn’t resist the comedy or the irony of the moment.
He wrote recently about the Pope’s illness, writing:
‘He’s called on the flock to pray for him. I’m bewildered.
If the all powerful deity he’s spent his life preaching about who’s calling the shots, wants to so inflict him, then surely he shouldn’t question his decisions.”
A post-death eternal existence in paradise should be one that would demonstrate a keen desire to get there, he wrote.
Not so Bob, maybe. His post-death existence is one that has rendered a person who was quite literally a living legend until a week ago into . . a New Zealand legend.
