The quotable Lolly Jackson

Say what you like about South Africa’s leading purveyor of punani — and there’ve been people who’ve said he was an arsehole and they’re glad he’s dead — but Lolly Jackson was good for a soundbite. I quoted him in all three of my collections of South African insults and the man who started his career off as a used car salesman — hands up anyone who is surprised — certainly knew how to throw a noun together with a verb.

“The old Dutchmen in power had very narrow minds,” he told a British journalist (presumably not a bloody agent) in 2006. “When we got democracy, people realised that this is what they want to do.” What South Africans wanted to do, evidently, was to pay lots of money for Ukrainian women to jiggle around naked in front of them. (A friend of mine, commenting on Jackson’s death, said that the man didn’t exactly win the Nobel peace prize, which unfairly overlooks the fact that Lolly did a lot to bring Eastern Europeans and South Africans closer together.)

Besides his tireless work in international relations (no touching allowed, though, and definitely no running off with one of the strippers), Lolly also brought the bad pun into the spotlight it so richly deserved. A billboard featuring a kitten poking its head out of a boot can be seen on Rivonia Road as I type. Pretty ordinary stuff, but there was a time when Teazers billboards broadcast such nuggets of wisdom as “She doesn’t wrestle, but you can watch her box”. The billboard that noted that “No need for gender testing” when the Caster Semenya debacle dominated the news also deserves an honorouble mention. The Advertising Standards Authority banned that one in response to complaints from the public, which could hardly have been a surprise, since the ASA also banned every other Teazers board that appeared beside our roads, including the one that showed a picture of a pair of hands holding a woman’s breasts and the headline “Load shedding at Teazers”. Lolly certainly kept them busy over the years.

His ongoing row with rival denizen of the strip club demimonde Andrew Phillips was guaranteed Sunday Times page 3 stuff. In one especially entertaining spat, Phillips dismissed Teazers as “a pit stop for plumbers and mechanics”. “Lolly is obnoxious, desperate and insecure and that’s why we don’t like him,” he said, helpfully.

Jackson in turn called Phillips “an insignificant prick”. Infuriated by a stripper who left Teazers and then tried to lure other strippers to join her at Phillips’ establishment, The Grand, Jackson sent her an SMS that read, part: “U fucking ugly bitch. If you call any more of my staff I will shove your phone right up your arse.” The story was made even more intriguing by revelations that Teazers’ general manager had left to join The Grand on the grounds that Jackson was “a shouting and screaming control freak who likens himself to God and is racist”.

Ah, the racism thing. This is when Lolly said that his policy of charging black customers a higher entrance fee was “because of the cultural background of these people”. Displaying a hitherto unknown interest in social anthropology, Lolly offered this penetrating analysis:

“It’s not in his culture to come and see a strip show. He’s got one [girlfriend] in this homeland, one there, one here and another one he’s gonna have a shower with tomorrow. Look at our vice-president, for God’s sakes.”

Years later, the mutual hatred burned as fiercely as ever. Phillips’ response to the news of Lolly’s death left absolutely no room for doubt about how he felt:

“I detested the man. He was trash — a bigot, racist, extortionist, megalomaniac. If there was a pie, he wanted the whole one. I won’t pretend I’m shedding a tear. I think the world is better off. He was pollution, there was no other way to describe him. The air has been purified. He was a nasty guy.”

At one point, Lolly was also involved in a reality show about strippers. During the auditioning process he explained his philosophy to the business of finding suitable Teazers employees, saying “In life, you’ve got to be cruel to be kind. I’ll rather say, ‘This is not the job for you. You’ve got too many stretch marks. Your tits are hanging on your arse’ or ‘No, you’re too fat. You’ll break my tables.’ ”

Lolly’s death was a gift for sub-editors, who came up with headlines like “Lolly popped” and “Who iced Lolly?” If I were collecting material for a fourth book (I’ve stopped at three, something George Lucas should have considering doing) I’d be beside myself with joy. Instead, I can only write blog entries and reflect on Lolly’s legacy. His widow and children may be taking over the running of the clubs, but can they take over the helm when it comes to the perfectly placed bon mot? Sadly, I doubt it.