JON ABBOTT IN BISHOPS COLLEGE's CLASS OF 51's RACE TO 100

 Dear Readers 

Jon

I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth which resulted in me being undernourished as a child. My dad owned Markhams, the men’s clothing business that had branches in Cape Town and Johannesburg when I was sent to Bishops. To prepare me for Big School I first went to the very fashionable Wet Pups (Western Province Prep School).

Dad had been the 1921 Bishops Rhodes Scholar, so as the eldest of three boys a lot was expected of me when I became a border in School House. Unfortunately I let the side down badly as I plugged matric. I’m now waiting for the pass mark to be reduced to 10% before trying again.

I redeemed myself slightly with some success in athletics not only at school but afterwards when I represented Western Province at the SA Junior Championships putting the shot and throwing the javelin. “All brawn and no brains,” was what masters at Bishops might have said.

          After a short time training to follow my Dad into Markhams I decided it was not for me. It was too boring measuring men for suites; asking them which side they hang and generally being subservient. My present wife Gayle is constantly reminding me that if I had stuck it out she could have been the wife of a millionaire now and not a struggle ex-journalist turned Private Eye. My old man sold out to the Foschini Group, which inexplicably changed the name to Markham (without the S) and now has close to 200 Markham outlets.

At aged 22 I spent a year criss-crossing Africa hitch-hiking alone to get to England to become a journalist. On the way I bought a dug out canoe from one of the locals and paddled 700 miles down the Congo that is reputed to be the deepest river in the world. This was by far the craziest part of my African safari because I had no life jacket and I can’t swim. If I had drowned Bishops would have been to blame for not stopping me from ducking swimming when I was there.

Kenya was being terrorised by the Mau Mau when I arrived, so to replenish my meagre finances I spent three months in the Kenya Police Reserve in charge of a Police post at 12 000 feet on snow capped Mount Kenya. That had its moments.

For instance some joker had ensured that there was an unexploded hand grenade down the long drop. It was never occupied for long that’s for sure.

My brief stay at Dr Albert Schweitzer’s hospital at Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa was a real eye opener. The sanitary arrangements for the patients and their hangers on would never have been allowed anywhere in his native France, and certainly not at a hospital. Yet it was the founding of this that was the main reason for him being awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.

I hadn’t cased the joint at all before I arrived in England. A great start for a would-be journo. The unions were very strong then and the one for journalists decreed that an apprentice started at 17. I would have had to have been paid as if I had several years experience, so papers were not rushing to employ me. Miraculously I got a job on the Melton Mowbray Times, a weekly that was so small it had missed the union’s scrutiny. The town is famous for pork pies of all things.

The paper consisted of a weedy little editor dominated by a Fleet Street veteran with long, nicotine stained finger nails, effectively running the show as the news editor with three reporters, a girl and one other chap about the same age as I was. It was a real sweat shop. The girl was in tears almost every day and after eight months I was the most experienced reporter.

I moved on to bigger weeklies and the Express and Echo, a daily in Exeter before joining two ex-Fleet Street journalists to form the Exeter News Agency.  It was a reporter eat reporter jungle in which we not only wrote for all the Fleet Street papers, like the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express etc, but also competed with their own West Country correspondents.

          I returned to South Africa to join the very conservative daily The Star in Johannesburg where I like to think I introduced investigative journalism. I won the grand sum of R70 for the best story of the year in 1971 for my tyre re-grooving expose`. From there I graduated to the Sunday Times to do investigations where I also wrote a hard hitting weekly column Business is Business for two years. Raymond Ackerman of Pick n Pay fame, the Patron of Bishops, who turned 90 in 2021, got a ticking off in one of them. We were in the same house at Bishops with him being a couple of years ahead of me.

Digging up the dirt on shysters earned me the runner up spot in the 1974 Stellenbosch Farmer’s Wineries National Award for Enterprising Journalism. In addition my muckraking resulted in two Government commissions of enquiry, a military board of inquiry and the first resale price fixing conviction several years after this was outlawed. It involved Pentax cameras sold by a subsidiary of Premier Milling.

          I left journalism to become a self employed Private Investigator specialising in life insurance. For 20 years all the major life companies like Liberty Life, Old Mutual and others that have since been taken over or gone under had me chasing all over Southern Africa, and even to India on one occasion to get to the bottom of illegitimate claims.

On a personal level I was about as successful as I was in my matric. Journalism and marriage don’t mix, was my excuse. It took me two wives before I found Gayle, who has been such a glutton for punishment that she has stuck with me now for nearly 50 years. She was also responsible for typing miles of reports and doing the admin that was the backbone of our two person PI business.  She is a St Mary’s (Joburg) Old Girl (she’ll kill me for saying that).

Sadly in addition to my parents I have survived two ex-wives, my younger brother Michael and a half brother David, who were both at Bishops, and two grown up children Simon and Samantha. These are the crosses you have to bear the older you get. My youngest brother, health crank, artist and bridge teacher Anthony is still alive and at 80 is doing his best to catch up with me. If I could have had my life over again I would have taken him to task for embarrassing me at the old school by not only passing matric, but going to university as well.

My wife Gayle who 
deserves the biggest
Long Service Medal 
of them all

Gayle and I have a daughter Belinda married to Cam. A designing woman (aren’t they all) she is a fair dinkum Sheila now with her own fashion house in Melbourne. Then there are the older ones in South Africa, pretty Mandy, a former hairdresser now living a life of luxury married to Erick, an advocate and on the go transitional coach Sally; Gayle’s daughters from her previous marriage. Sally became a Covid leper after she survived it twice, but hopefully people speak to her now. The customers fortunately didn’t know that when she was promoted to a Brand Manager at Clover Dairy she fell with her bum in the butter. She is married to paddler of note Alan Witherden, who has been a canoe judge at the Olympic Games and other international canoeing events for as long any anybody can remember. He’s an international business consultant in his spare time. And to think that we once thought he had a steady job.

 Alan, who is almost as old as I am, didn’t go to Bishops and nor did the husbands of the other two. Obviously Gayle and I were not very happy about that, but I better shut up now because to say I am outnumbered would be a gross understatement.

From the Bishops magazine

For the last 12 years I have been far from gainfully employed on my DearJon-letter Blog. Google pays peanuts and I’m the monkey. My Blog might well be sited as the other woman if I ever get divorced again. I have written posts on a wide range of subjects from congratulating the Yanks for celebrating my wife’s birthday on the 4^th of July to an investigation into how Jersey BBC radio host, Murray Norton effectively cyber bullied my 47 year old son Simon to death. This was not long after his sister Samantha, who was living in England, had jumped off a car park building a few months after the birth of her first child. There is also one on how I might have become King of England if my mother had not been so picky.

I have self published two books Dearjon Exposed, a collection of the best posts from my blog and The Butcher of Rosebank. This is a true story about Dr Wynne Lieberthal, who was possibly South Africa’s worse orthopaedic surgeon ever. It was based on information I collected during one of my PI life insurance investigations, because he was not only a terrible doctor, but a crook as well.

My wife and I now live in Cape Town near Kommetjie in an estate appropriately named Imhoff’s Gift for us blue blooded Abbott’s. It’s made particularly picturesque by flocks of flamingos on the adjoining vlei with mountains in the background.

Regards,

Jon

P.S. Fellow OD Mike Mathews’ memory is better than mine (I haven’t yet found a surgeon who does brain transplants, unfortunately). This is what he told me. “I recall your letter some years ago to the old OD magazine calling for a change in its format, design etc and have been much impressed with the new-look, biannual magazine which resulted from that letter. Well done!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

 

         

 

A ROYAL DATE THAT COULD HAVE RADICALLY CHANGED THE BRITISH MONARCHY

Dear Royalists everywhere,

King Jon I

          The wedding of the year at the end of this week could have been very different had my mother played her cards right. So different in fact that neither Prince Harry nor Meghan Markle would be there and if it was to take place it would be between another couple with no connection to them at all.

          You see if my mother, Cape Town socialite Leonie Chiappini had not been so fussy and had been seriously mesmerised by being chosen to date a prince I might have been King of England right now.

          Prince of Wales was the title granted to the heir apparent to the British crown since the 14^th century. Prince Charles, the eldest son of the current Queen is the longest serving Prince of Wales.

          But in 1925 when he visited South Africa the Prince of Wales was the first born of George V, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and  Emperor of India. On the trip he spent four days in Cape Town being wined and dined. This was when my 18 year old mother had her first introduction to Royalty.

Mum and the Prince of Wales

          She was the talk of the Cape when she was summoned by Royal decree to accompany him on several of these posh occasions. At the time this good looking 30 year old bachelor was a catch every girl and their mothers of course, would have dreamt of.

          If royal blood was a necessary credential to marry into the British Royal Family my mother had the right background. According to a remarkable book by Sir Ralph-Payne Gallwey one of her Italian ancestors Louis Philippe was King of France from 1830 to 1848 when he was forced to abdicate after an uprising.

          The Cape Times described her as a “member of a very well known peninsular family who takes a leading part in its social life. Her beautiful fair colouring and clean cut features marks her as one of the most attractive looking of the younger members of society.”

Mum

          So she was a pretty good catch in her own right.                              
          Had my mother married the Prince of Wales he would not have been forced to abdicate within months of becoming King Edward VIII in 1936 on the death of his father. Not one to comply with accepted convention he caused a constitutional crisis only a few months into his reign when he announced his intention to marry a divorcee and an American to boot.

          The Brits were not going to have that old boy. The Government threatened to resign. Wallis Simpson had not only divorced her first husband but was in the throws of getting rid of a second one.

          Inevitably the complications were compounded by a religious side issue. Marrying her would have clashed with the King’s token role as head of the Church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England and symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, would have had a cadenza.

          But whatever the British might have said about His Majesty at the time they could not fault the length he was prepared to go for the woman he loved. He abdicated in December 1936 and married her in France the following year after her divorce from her second husband had come through.

Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor

          In spite of the fact that he had so badly tarnished the Royal image he was given the title of Duke of Windsor. He and Wallis then remained inseparable until he died aged 77 in 1972. She lived on to just short of her 90th birthday.

          So if he had married my mother he would still have been King in 1972 and I, as her first born, would have ascended to the throne at the age of 39 having, like him, held the title of Prince of Wales from the age of 16.

          As it turned out Mum told me that he was the “rudest man” she had ever met. And being a headstrong woman she was certainly not prepared to make an exception to ensure she lived a life of absolute luxury being almost worshipped wherever she went as the Queen of England.

          In 1933 she married my father Cecil Willoughby Abbott whose English father was the owner of Markhams the men’s clothing business in the centre of Cape Town. It was founded in 1873 by H.W Markham. My grandfather cleverly married the boss’ daughter, which enabled him to become the owner.

After completing his studies at Oxford University where he had been a Diocesan College (Bishops) Rhodes Scholar my Dad joined the firm and followed his father as its head. Eventually he sold out to the Foschini Group. It now has 330 of these men’s clothing stores. Long after it took over from my Dad the powers that be there inexplicably decided on the costly exercise of taking the S off Markhams.

          While on a visit to England with my father in 1936 my mother was invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace on 22 July just a few months after that very rude Prince had become King Edward VIII. Of course she went.

The basic form that Royal invitations take hasn't changed ever.
My mother's above in 1936 and what a typical Royal wedding
invitation looks like

          The odd thing about the snooty invitation was that the only person who the Lord Chamberlain had been “commanded by the King to summon” was “Mrs Willoughby Abbott.” Whether there was a separate invitation for my father or whether he was deliberately left out I will never know.

          Anyway as I was not born with Royal blood I have just had to battle along through life with that inferior blue stuff.

          Regards,

          Jon, who always blamed his mother for not giving him a crack at being King because he was convinced that his natural diplomacy and sense of duty would have made him perfectly suited for the job.

Prince Harry and Meghan 

P.S. It looks as though Harry is marrying into a family from hell. Meghan’s half sister Samantha hasn’t spoken to her for three years. To rub it in she has been making money out of her book The Diary of Princess Pushy Sister. And when Samantha 53 appeared on Piers Morgan’s TV talk show Good Morning Britain to complain about how their father Thomas had been harassed by “media vultures” Morgan sailed into her. She was there to back her dad who was caught out by London’s Daily Mail for staging paparazzi photos of himself that the paper claimed were fakes. Morgan accused Samantha of trashing Meghan for years and asked how she could have “the gall to come here to talk about media vultures.” Megan’s half brother Thomas also showed how deep the rifts run in the family when he wrote an open letter to Prince Harry asking him to call off the wedding to avoid “the biggest mistake in Royal wedding history.” While the ex-actress might make a good life partner for Harry her family baggage is more like what the Americans would describe as trailer trash. One newspaper described her extended family as a “motley collection of individuals who, between them, have a long record of boozing, bust-ups and bankruptcies.” Hardly what anybody would want as an addition to their family particularly if they happen to be the Queen of England and Prince Philip in an age where celebrities are under a brutal media spotlight from every angle 24/7.

          This has some similarity to the Duke of Windsor/Wallis Simpson affair in that Meghan has also been divorced, although this is no longer regarded in the same dim light as it was in 1936. She too is an American with the added complication of being of mixed race – her father is Dutch-Irish and her mother is an African-American. But unlike the Duke, Harry is too far down the line of succession ever to become King so that must come as some relief to his critics in the Royal Family.

          Will it be as successful a marriage as the Duke and Wallis’ was or will Harry be making the terrible mistake that Meghan’s half brother predicted?