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Speaker 1: I was very sad excuse me to hear of the

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Speaker 1: passing of Bob Jones, Sir Robert Jones. The last contact

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Speaker 1: I had with him, I think was last year when

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Speaker 1: he sent me a copy of his latest book. They

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Speaker 1: always came with a personal note. When I say personal,

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Speaker 1: a letter came with a letter. He would have dictated

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Speaker 1: the letter and had it typed up, and he signed

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Speaker 1: it himself. He was from a different era of sorts.

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Speaker 1: I never received an email from Bob, only letters. Last

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Speaker 1: time I dealt with him in person was in his

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Speaker 1: office in Wellington, overlooking the harbor. That too was from

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Speaker 1: an era beautifully set up, as you can imagine, but

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Speaker 1: in a time and place kind of way, a lot

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Speaker 1: of paneling, a lot of staff. His office was large

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Speaker 1: on the corner. Of course, he smoked. That became a

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Speaker 1: thing in the Helen Clark days, by the way, when

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Speaker 1: she was busy making rules around smoking indoors. Bob was

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Speaker 1: having none of that, because his office he was the boss,

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Speaker 1: if not the king. So last time I was in

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Speaker 1: his office, we had wine and we sat amongst the

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Speaker 1: swirling tobacco smoke coming out of his pipe. The artwork

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Speaker 1: was worth the trip alone. He had one fantastic taste

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Speaker 1: and two a fantastic collection. He also had one of

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Speaker 1: the best brain Geleber encounter. What was often lost, actually

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Speaker 1: by many in the barrage of cantankerous boobiage, was the

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Speaker 1: amount of knowledge and wisdom he had gleaned from a

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Speaker 1: lifetime of reading and travel. There wasn't a place he

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Speaker 1: hadn't been. He had more stories than you ever had

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Speaker 1: time to hear, and he had well or time, but

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Speaker 1: he had time to tell you. Small irony are noted

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Speaker 1: on Friday night when I watched the television. In their coverage,

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Speaker 1: they made much of the Rod Vaughn helicopter encounter, the

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Speaker 1: irony being no one these days hires a chopper to

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Speaker 1: go looking for a fisherman. TV three reflected the modern malayism,

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Speaker 1: afraid to say his passing was the second story behind

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Speaker 1: the weather, even though the weather was the day before's news.

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Speaker 1: It showed a lack of understanding of who Jones was

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Speaker 1: and what he contributed to the country. That's the problem

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Speaker 1: with modern newsrooms these days, the institutional knowledge has largely

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Speaker 1: left the building. From business to politics to public discourse,

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Speaker 1: Jones was an invaluable addition to the national psyche, unafraid, bold,

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Speaker 1: brilliant with the language, and fantastically funny because he was

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Speaker 1: fantastic reverend, even when a reverence was wildly more tolerated

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Speaker 1: than it is these days. It was a great life,

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Speaker 1: and he was a great man. For more from the

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Speaker 1: Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to News Talks at B

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Speaker 1: from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.