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.
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