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"[W]hen our paths finally crossed [in 1979] at a cartoon exhibition ... 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. ...
"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, [his] New Zealand 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 keyboards 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 and hamstrung morale, and discipline crumbled. ...
"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 ... 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. [But it was their manifesto that Lange's Government implemented - Ed.] ...
"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."
~ Tom Scott from his obituary ahead of today's memorial service for Bob Jones: 'Tom Scott farewells Bob Jones'. Read on there for Steve Braunias's postscript on the very best of Jones's twenty-four books ...
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