Clive Simpkins

In case you were wondering....

Hiya! Nope, I haven't fallen off the planet. Just been furiously writing some new books. The one, Presenting, Speaking and Facilitating Secrets (230 pages) is presently with the printer. Pic is of the proof mock-up. The real thing is bigger.

The second book I'm nearly through writing, is Media Appearance Secrets. For people who need to talk on radio, meet the press, face a camera on TV. Also 230 pages - dunno how they both managed that in a totally random process. Numerologists?

So, when the final PDF of the second book has gone off to the printer, I'll hopefully have some time and a millivolt of energy to start writing something here again. It's not the book writing that's the mission. It's the editing.... If you're a writer, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you're not, well it's kinda what I imagine child-birth to be like, but with the baby in the breech position. At the time, you say, 'never again!' - until the next time.

See you in 2009. Have a peaceful, resorative and safe holiday period. Ciao.

Astonishingly interesting read

If you're even peripherally interested in politics and British politics in particular, here's a must-read. Like many books of the genre it's a tome of note - some 800 pages. I find these a pain in the wrist to read in bed. They literally weigh in at over a kilogram. Nuts. Why not produce them as two volumes, I wonder?

I got to finish reading The Alastair Campbell Diaries - 'The Blair Years' - last week. He was Tony Blair's poster-child Spin Doctor. From when the British Labour Party was in opposition, to being the governing body and all the way through to the end of the second term. It's fascinating to have the inside track on what was going on backstage with mega-events occurring onstage.

Campbell is an emotionally volatile, deeply neurotic, egotistic, vindictive and vengeful man. He clearly couldn't stand Cherie Blair. He had a love-hate relationship with the notoriously self-centred and Primma Donna-ish Peter Mandelson. He joked when referring to the potential of the British Cabinet being blotted out in an aircrash, that a colleague wouldn't know which queen to tell first. i.e. Her Majesty Lillibet or Peter Mandelson! Ascerbic.

Throughout the book Campbell refers to people by their initials. Clearly the TB for Tony himself or GB for Gordon Brown or RC for Robin Cook are fine, but with my terrible memory for initials/names or acronyms I had (in the initial stages) to keep referring back to the index to keep me on track. That bugbear notwithstanding, I found it a riveting read.

Tony Blair himself emerges from the Iraq debacle with a little more honour than I would have suspected. He took astonishing personal reputational risks - being dubbed Bush's Poodle and the like. But, based even on Campbell's unfavourable view of the invasion, Blair had a real belief that he was doing something both honourable and necessary.

The relationship between TB and Bill Clinton (BC!) is a revelation. I've always admired Clinton (Lewinsky issue notwithstanding). What a mind, what a strategist, what a communicator, what a personality. You'll like him.

Campbell has a mouth on him like a sailor. He doesn't mince words or opinions on people or indeed heads of state (Chirac emerges particularly poorly, Yeltsin, permanently tanked on Vodka, hilariously) that he doesn't like. Gordon Brown's character evolves slowly and dourly throughout the book and the power interplay and competitiveness between him and Blair are intriguing. The egos involved at multiple levels in government, civil service and elsewhere, are breathtaking.

Possibly, what fascinated me most, was the extraordinary difficulty of keeping anything confidential under wraps. There seemed always to be some twit of a Cabinet member willing to sell the party down the river, for a few moments of media fame or insular career-building. Clare Short was the worst of the lot - suffering from terminal foot-in-mouth disease. For some incomprehensible reason, Blair wouldn't, or couldn't (did she have something on him?) get rid of the silly cow.

Finally and perhaps most pertinently, the book demonstrates the incredible difficulty, in the media Pirhana-tank and slugfest of our wireless global village, of managing the delicate balance between delivery of services and mandate and managing perceptions. It should be compulsory reading for all modern leaders and management and certainly anyone interested in PR or reputation management.

I'm co-reading the George Bizos autobiography (taking time to 'get' his style) and Mark Gevisser's new biography on Thabo Mbeki (verbal silk - Gevisser is a gifted writer). I'll report on both in due course.

Riaan Manser's 'Around Africa on my bicycle'

For those of us who've travelled or worked in Africa and think we understand 'border hassles' - ya ain't seen nuthin' yet! I couldn't put this (big, 700 page) book down and ploughed through it in one weekend. I was frustrated, exhausted, moved and exalted along with Riaan Manser. He's brave, innovative, resilient and also a gifted writer. This is adventure with a capital 'A'. It took me back to fiction adventure like Biggles, the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five and the Secret Seven - but this isn't fiction. It's real and it's about our continent. I've already been buying copies for friends. Go read it!

Dances with Devils - by Jacques Pauw

This is an astonishing book. Written by what is clearly a very brave (or mad!) journalist with a self-extinction wish.

I read Riaan Malan's 'My Traitor's Heart' earlier in 2006. I thought it was an astonishing expose of what went on behind the scenes of Apartheid atrocities. But Jacques Pauw's book 'Dances with Devils' goes a quantum leap further yet. It reads from start to finish like a brilliant whodunnit.

I was tempted to cut the book in half to make the sheer physical weight more manageable as a 'lie in bed' read. This is a big book in every sense of the word. Its subject matter traverses the continent of Africa in heart-stopping, breath-holding, sleep-depriving fashion.

If, as I have, you've travelled within continental Africa on business, you'll have a sense of the (considerable) urban challenges of doing so. Pauw's journalistic forays take him into remote rural or desert locations with drugged-up warlords and genocide perpetrators, in which his only means of departure or (more accurately) 'escape', is a United Nations food-drop aircraft which might or might not arrive within a week.

If you'd like to read the story behind the stories and documentaries that have featured on SABC TV's 'Special Assignment' program - Pauw's international award-winning video journalism showcase - and gain an unparalleled insight into and an understanding of the intrinsic socio-dynamics of Africa - this is a must-not-miss read. You'll force your friends to read it. Just go ask mine! :-)

Author Jonny Steinberg shirking responsibility?

It was inevitable I guess. The blood smear for examination on your journalistic/literary microscope is the life of a prevaricating long-term con and avowed prison-gang member. For analysis in a book entitled The Number. Your naïve ingoing agreement with the con is that this will not be about money. But your lives, against all the better principles of journalism become inextricably intertwined. You shift into dangerously voyeuristic territory. In which you become alternately mentor, alter-ego, father confessor and trouble-shooter.

Twice-winner of the coveted Sunday Times Alan Paton prize for literature, Jonny Steinberg, is in this position and unless he provides information to the contrary, appears to be shirking a moral responsibility in the life of his subject.

Thirty five year old Oxford graduate Steinberg, a superb and engaging journo-writer, stepped into the life of Magadien Wentzel, a former Cape Town Pollsmoor prison inmate and member of the 28s gang, notorious for homosexual activity. Steinberg’s book on Wentzel’s travails was terrifying, depressing and if at times a tad complex or over detailed (when the pure journo brain kicked in) an otherwise brilliant read.

Magadien Williams is no longer an occupant in Pollsmoor. He’s outside, trying to pull together the remnants of his sorry and profoundly dysfunctional life. Steinberg received R 50 000 in prize money for his Alan Paton award winning book. He’d evidently undertaken to give Wentzel ten percent of book royalties. Wentzel received R5 000 of the actual prize money, is evidently not happy and appears to have severed ties with Steinberg. Prize money ain’t royalties - but maybe some of those have been paid over too.

This is not a happy scenario and it’s one which was fairly predictable. The ‘you owe me because the book was about me and it’s my story that was the winner’ mindset has kicked in. Steinberg, wearing his journalistic hat, will be all too aware of the fall-out potential and implications. In an interview with Saturday Star Noor-Jehan Yoro Badat, he artfully sidestepped the main line of enquiry about the broedertwis between author and subject and we were treated via her article to a lecture on journalism 101. How did she get suckered so?

The unfortunate part of Badat’s interview with Steinberg is that his skilled avoidance of being drawn on anything remotely personal absolutely begs to have someone dig deeper. A screamingly obvious question is: Have you done everything possible to facilitate getting Wentzel’s life into some sort of order? With your (one assumes) extensive network of contacts, why is it necessary for Wentzel to worry about where his next meal is coming from? For him to say that he misses the security of prison life and the regular food supply that comes with it? Or is that just another ‘sympathy vote’ pitch on his part?

Maybe Jonny, you’ve done all of these morally and ethically expected things and your subject is just beyond help or repair. In which case, bravo to you for trying. However, in the interests of your own reputation and to kill any collateral hubbub real quick, maybe it would be helpful to say so? Silence, in some cases, is not golden, but highly toxic.