Make rascals social and business pariahs
My girlfriend stopped me from attacking Bell Pottinger CEO James Henderson in the loos at Ascot two weeks ago. She’s half-Swedish, half-Californian — and therefore Swiss when it comes to disputes.
I brooded for a week after, lamenting a lost opportunity to see Henderson’s floppy hair stuck under my foot in the latrine as I repeatedly waved my hand in front of the flush sensor. The following week I loitered around key points at the Henley Regatta awaiting another opportunity. Alas, it did not arrive.
I’ve been banging my head against the wall for the past 18 months because nobody in London was paying any attention to Bell Pottinger’s activities in SA.
I’ve spoken to lawyers, journalists, politicians, senior public servants and two lords. The response, particularly from the liberal media, was an overwhelmingly tepid: “Oh, we know they are a mischievous lot, we have already profiled them.”
The more I heard this the more I got the feeling we were living in an age of stoning peasants, where the village rapist escapes sanction because he has an uncle among the council elders.
When you look at reports that Bell Pottinger staff were once caught boasting to clients about access to members of former prime minister David Cameron’s cabinet, the margin for the invention or exploitation of theories is substantial and entirely consistent with the nature of the Cameron-Osborne regime, filled with scheming, giggling men whose handshakes resemble small wet fish.
Henderson’s apology, by choice of words, makes a clear assumption that we’re all a bunch of backward idiots who submit to contrition as it forms part of our national identity. But the response was even worse, a kind of madness that inhabits the minds of upstanding citizens who presuppose this is all, ultimately, a gentleman’s game. “Tell us the truth about Oakbay and the Guptas,” opposition parties and civil organisations replied, “then we’ll forgive you.”
Really? As if. Before I accuse the estimable activists of being cursed with common sense gone rogue, I have a few ideas I’d like to share.
The way to the truth isn’t through an independent legal inquiry but through researching then writing to Bell Pottinger’s client base. The firm’s services aren’t exclusive to evildoers — there are, apparently, some passive companies that pay for rudimentary publicity services such as the generation of press releases and promotions. Two of these were revealed, by Bell Pottinger itself, as the shoe maker Kurt Geiger and the London Chamber Orchestra. Now, I could be wrong, but I doubt Kurt and a group of classically trained musicians would fancy association with a company now accused of attempting to ignite a race war.
Former partner Victoria Geoghegan is not going to apologise. She wasn’t raised like that. It was her father, Chris Geoghegan, who allegedly landed her the Oakbay account via an introduction to the Gupta family through his friend Fana Hlongwane. Geoghegan senior apparently owns property in SA somewhere, so presumably he interacts with locals. I suspect it’s Cape Town.
This is cute because it presents an opportunity for the wealthy white elites of Constantia or the Atlantic seaboard to be useful for a change — by striking the Geoghegan family off their Christmas card and dinner party planning lists. Declining the old boy’s invitations for Boxing Day tennis and croquet knees-ups. Ignoring them in Melissa’s.
Until the Geoghegans’ summer holiday environment resembles some sort of social pariah purgatory — until Bell Pottinger look around and realise that not even slave-trading Arab sheiks or oligarchs who throw people off mountains will do business with it anymore — mark my words: neither the truth nor a meaningful apology will emerge.
But there was always going to be a moment of extraordinary irony on this descent. Henderson’s apology confirms that Oakbay acting CEO Ronica Ragavan was completely right when she wrote to this newspaper and bemoaned the company’s victimisation. Oakbay, she said in too many words, is central to the narrative surrounding transformation.
Indeed, it was about transformation: what was once a foul-smelling disinformation agenda was transformed into a big, fat, rotting pig that exploded and covered the faces of those who gleefully crowded it when it started oinking — from the Youth League to the Women’s League to smoked-up military veterans and other militia — with egg and poo.
HENDERSON’S APOLOGY MAKES A CLEAR ASSUMPTION THAT WE’RE ALL A BUNCH OF BACKWARD IDIOTS WHO SUBMIT TO CONTRITION