Sir Bob Jones
Early last year Stuff journo Andrea Vance wrote an article describing how a number of New Zealand (or to her, Aotearoa) university anthropologists were deeply concerned about protecting the remaining moriori tree carvings on the Chatham Islands.
I was sorely tempted to contact her but as her writing is always grimly humourless, I decided the amusing truth relating to those remaining carvings would be wasted.
As the late Michael King wrote in his 1990 book, “The Chatham Islands of New Zealand” “nearly all of the thousands of carvings had been destroyed through forest clearances and wind damage. Their numbers had now been reduced to dozens in a small number of protected groves”.
In fact, those remaining few carvings were made in the late 1980s, while Michael was in the Chathams writing his book but he was unaware of this reality and would not have approved. Only four people knew of their creation.
One was my fishing mate of those days on trips to the Chathams and in the Tongariro river, namely the late Sir Peter Tapsell, the former Cabinet minister and Parliamentary speaker. And of course, although also now deceased, was the carver, a funny bugger who had a very good motive for doing this. I actually designed a couple for him, which he promised he’d bang up, although whether he did, I don’t know.
Finally, the other in the know is a prominent Kiwi who shall remain un-named.
People often ask how I thought up some of the off-beat humour in my novels. I tell the truth and say apart from excessive red wine consumption while penning the plots, in many cases, I didn’t think them up, but actually experienced them.
Anyone familiar with my 2002 comic novel OGG will now recognize how the Moriori carvings lark inspired sections of that book.
So too with my novel Full Circle about a floating brothel anchored at McMurdo in the Antarctic. To increase the number of bearded scientist customers the brothel owners came up with stunts to pull more scientists and thus potential customers to the Antarctic. These included creating new species such as by painting white stripes down some penguins back and the like.
Does it matter? Not in my view as modern universities are now utterly degraded by their ever increasing, non-academic nonsense subjects, as I ridiculed in my “Degrees For Everyone” novel two decades ago. Sending them up can be justified as a public service. Indeed such is their degradation it’s become almost a rite of passage for successful novelists to knock out a book taking the mickey out of academics.
Evelyn Waugh kicked it off with his delightful 1974 novella, “Scott-King’s Modern Europe”.
Best-selling Kingsley Amis relished ridiculing them and so it was thereafter with numerous comic send-ups by diverse prominent novelists.
My favourite though is Alexander McCall-Smith’s “Portuguese Irregular Verbs”.
As a former Edinburgh Professor of Medical Law McCall-Smith knew what he was talking about. He was deservedly knighted in the January New Year awards as he brings a great deal of pleasure to millions of readers with his steadfast output of at least one new novel annually, dating back to his first international success, the delightful “Number One Ladies Detective Agency” more than a decade ago.
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