Why do we joke about Lolly?

Why do we respond to the news of celebrity deaths with black humour? The news about Lolly Jackson’s murder broke at around 10.30pm on Twitter last night. Within less than five minutes, the jokes started.

“lolly jackson murdered … Gigi using her survivor winnings to take out the competition?”

“Wow! Lolly Jackson shot only 15 times! Got off lightly.”

and

“The tribe has spoken … ”

There was a real sense of community here, as South Africans on Twitter responded with shock (mostly) and clamoured for news. Was this another dreadful crime to follow on from the brutal death of Eugene Terre’Blanche?

When reports began to emerge that Jackson had been shot 15 times by a Greek businessman in Kempton Park, evidently a former client, the output of quips ramped up significantly. The following are some of the wittier ones:

“Lolly Jackson appears to be the victim of a big Fat Greek Ledding!!”

“Lolly Jackson might have been sleazy and got filthy rich from strippers, but, like anyone else, he had some bad traits too.”

“Wow Lolly Jackson shot dead! I wonder if teazers is open tonight? And are the strippers wearing black heels?”

“I don’t know whats more shocking that Lolly Jackson was murdered or that he lived in Kempton Park.”

“Dibs on the Koenigsegg.”

“Lolly & the Greek bail out?”

And then, just after midnight, an SMS:

“Breaking news: Lolly Jackson brought to his knees taking shots to the face.”

Many people were offended by the wisecracks — almost all of which were made, significantly, by men — but this is one case where I understand why so many responded with gallows humour. Jackson was a character who required no introduction. He operated in a business that, despite the claims on his billboards, was deeply sleazy. He exploited women who were shipped in to twirl around poles and display their pudenda to paying clients. He routinely attracted the attention of the police. He had plenty of enemies, and his clashes with them frequently made it into the news.

Given all of this, his death — 15 bullets! 15! — has a dramatic, Tarantinoesque quality to it. If it’s tragic in the proper sense (Jackson, like Macbeth, was perhaps the architect of his own downfall), it was also operatic. It’s hard to imagine anything more … fitting. No common or garden demise for Lolly.

A lot of us were relieved that this was not a random hijacking, but a crime of passion; this made it much easier to laugh despite ourselves. Jackson frequently complained about crime in South Africa, and it’s oddly consoling that in the end he was done in by the sort of person he would allow through the door of one of his clubs. Condolences to his family, who knew him as a husband and father rather than South Africa’s strip king. He was endlessly quotable and featured in all three of my books; he was a fixed presence in the news and I think that South Africans will miss him in some strange way. But as the sardonic citizens on Twitter would observe: you live by the porksword, you die by the porksword.