UNFORGETTABLE CHARLES HAYES!

(
The last time I wrote about Charles Hayes I mentioned that someone had nicked “I’m Only The Editor” by his late wife Margaret Ann Hayes. Luckily I have managed to get a copy, and an autographed one too, so that I can pay much tribute to two men who were my teachers as I developed as a journalist.)

THE FIRST TIME I met Charles and Jean Hayes was a little while after they launched Andrew Crawford Productions in Jeevanjee Street  Nairobi. I was a teenager then and working for the Kenya Probation and Remand Homes Service, briefly as a juvenile probation and later as a statistical clerk in charge of producing the annual reports. Through this service, I got to know quite a few very important lawyers and lots of criminals, but I also got to know quite a lot of decent indigenous Kenyans, especially musicians. It was the musicians, especially the late Fadhili Williams (who is credited with recording the first version of Malaika in Kenya and who went on to become one of the pioneers of black Kenyan music). Through him, I got to know the Bata Shoe Shine Boys (top of the pops), Inspector Gideon and the Kenya Police Band (brilliant) and a host of others.

Charles was way ahead of his time. “Between broadcasting 30-second news spots for the BBC’s The World Today and reporting on Mau Mau activities which led most of East Africa listening. Charles was then the new Head of the African Services Department of Information  in Nairobi.” Before that he had held several posts in the civil service including one as a district officer.

“By then he was already an outstanding personality in the media and the literary scene and with a “golden  voice” Charles was frequently roped in to use his voice in radio advertising.”

When Voice of Kenya television was born, Charles Hayes was their first top catch. He ran his weekly 30-minute program, Talking Point which was often the talking point that evening and the next day because he attracted most of the outstanding personalities of the era. To say the least, he was brilliant on TV as he was in everything he seemed to do  in life.

The Equator Club was a very exclusive, high-class night spot. They hired the best musicians available, and even sometimes featured visiting headliners. I don’t think they had an official closing time. Most folks don’t know this, but the Nation newspaper, or at least the idea of it, was born there.

“Somehow the conversation took us to Nairobi’s Equator Club at three that morning, with the band still playing softly, Michael Curtis told Charles Hayes he would like to join  the Taifa (all Swahili newspaper) venture.

“He outlined the idea that in making Taifa into East Africa’s best Swahili, we could also expect to hive off an English language paper which he ( Michael Curtis) would edit. ‘Just translate some of those stories you’re printing and, in English, they would be winners,” Michael Curtis said. Curtis also laid down the dictum that we must write ourselves out of jobs and from the beginning we must train African editors to take over, say in 10 years.”

What Charles did not know at the time was that “the Hayes’ were being approached through Michael by the Aga Khan. When Charles Hayes was charged with the task of finding the means of printing a newspaper, he found an Asian-owned job printer in the “back streets of Nairobi.”

In his friendly voice, Curtis said: “Charles I think we can do better than that.” He then divulged that his proposals were being financed by the Aga Khan and that the target was a newspaper group to cover the whole of East Africa.”

East African Newspapers  (Nation Series) Ltd, was born on April 1, 1959, with Michael Curtis as Managing Director and Taifa its only publication, a tabloid. Hayes introduced  Dr Mareka Gecaga (a highly respected Kenyan with direct links to Jomo Kenyatta) who asked him to be the group’s first African director, which he accepted. Althea Tebutt was the Advertising Director and Hayes the Editorial Director.

The rest as they say is history and as history is recorded it is fair to say that Kenya owes much to the prowess and genius of the Hayes family. Charles, as into almost everything in media, radio, tv, theatre, recording studios, government information services and lots and lost more. He was a charming man with a ready smile and it did not matter who you were, if you asked his advice you got it in bucket loads. I was only 16 at the time and he never once turned me away. In many ways, I tried to model myself in the image of Charles Hayes, sadly I think in hindsight that was silly. I could only learn from him but there was ever only one Charles Hayes.

Both Michael Curtis and Charles Hayes were the stuff of superstars of their time and their world.

Consider this tribute to CH by a mutual friend who passed away recently, journalist Gerry Loughran: Soldier, colonial administrator, linguist, actor, hotelier, environmentalist, editor, publisher, Charles Hayes was a renaissance man of a type rarely seen in these more sedate times. In a volume which ranges from pre-World War II London through wartime Burma and India to the mesmerising beauty of Kenya and finally to anchorage in British Columbia, Canada. Margaret Hayes has chronicled an astonishing life with wifely tenderness and professional precision. Those who knew Charles Hayes will see him come alive in these pages; those who did not know him will come as close to his impetuous, bright-eyed enthusiasms as this esoteric experience allows. Margaret Hayes  has introduced us to a new literary genre: the love letter as biography. And what a billet-doux it is.