#WeRead – Robbie Vermont chats about his writing career

Since my school days I had actually been a little creative in my writing and I enjoyed English – literature more than grammar, which I still know little about.

Somehow I managed to matriculate and set out to find a job in an advertising agency, with no success.

My father was a signwriter and knew all the top executives in the five main Jo’burg agencies.

All of them agreed to see me and all gave essentially the same advice: the ad business was fiercely competitive and could not afford to hire youngsters right out of school.

They had to have people with experience who could contribute to the business with as little delay as possible.

They concurred that I should try and get some experience in the printing trade as that might open doors for me in the production side, the ad business.

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This I did and it did.

After a year in print, I received an offer from a small ad agency that had recently opened its doors.

I grabbed the opportunity with both hands, even though it meant taking a cut in pay from R60 a month to R40.

I worked for the agency for three months, swilling vast quantities of strong black coffee and writing some reasonable advertising copy.

At the end of the second month, I received a 100 per cent increase and my salary went up to R80.

Not many people can brag about getting that sort of raise.

However, the boss, who was drawing R100 a day for expenses from petty cash, came to me at the end of that second month and suggested that I might like to receive half my salary then and the other half in the middle of the month.

The writing was on the wall and did not point towards a great future in this position.

I managed to find a job with John Dickinson & Co, the paper merchants and makers of Croxley stationery.

I assisted the general manager for a couple of years, left and joined Goodwear Shoes, owners of Cuthberts and Spitz, which had its own in-house advertising department.

After a year there, I was retrenched when SA Breweries bought the business.

I then joined Metal Box Company. Again, a year later, I was retrenched.

Because of losing my job with monotonous regularity, I learned that there was no job security in the creative business, but I also learned something about corporate communications, as I compiled and edited staff newsletters at all these places.

When Metal Box let me go, I was a little down, to say the least.

My father was an avid reader of The Star and he came to me one evening with a sits vac ad.

It was AE&CI Limited urgently wanting a journalist/photographer who was prepared to travel occasionally.

This sounded good and I liked the idea of working for AE&CI.

Their stand at the Rand Easter Show was a real “must” to visit each year.

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Also, a friend and I used to look forward to Fridays, not because it was the beginning of the weekend but rather to see the latest AE&CI advertisement on the back page of The Star.

These ads were always so clever, educational and more often than not, funny.

I agreed with my dad that I could do what they needed and applied for the job.

I think I got it because I was available immediately and I joined them forthwith.

I had had no formal journalistic training, so it was up to my boss, Dave Tattersall, the PRO, to knock me into shape.

He was extremely patient.

He taught me to write news stories for AE&CI Reporter, the company’s internal newspaper, and, by being tough on me, he taught me to write features for Prospect, the external colour glossy magazine.

This was a hard time for he made me rewrite every story a number of times, mainly because my introductions were tame and uninteresting.

In those days, it meant retyping the entire document as word processing had not yet been invented.

It was a hard slog and grind and while I resented it at the time, I can now appreciate the legacy it left me.

Not long after, I became involved in Reporter. I was sent on a Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (Prisa) seminar on house journal editing.

There I met John Pitt, who was working for The Star.

He gave a lecture and placed great emphasis on the need to get people’s names right.

“Always get a person’s name right, for remember it is that person’s most personal possession and sometimes his or her only one,” he said.

That lesson has always remained with me and, even so, I have managed to get it wrong from time to time.

Over the years, I edited both Reporter and Prospect.

The former won Prisa’s first house journal competition and received the Han Ludeker Award.

Later, when the competition was enlarged and included different categories, Reporter continued winning awards and Prospect won a series of awards for “best this” and “best that”, including the Masthead Trophy for the best external house journal on about six occasions, after which Prisa allowed us to keep the trophy.

It is now housed in The Dynamite Company Museum at Modderfontein.

Some 30 years after joining what became AECI, I was again retrenched and for almost 20 years, I plied my trade as a freelance writer. I found it hard going at times, but counted a number of organisations among my clients.

These include: AECI Medical Aid Society, Heartland Properties, Standard Bank, Wits University, the Picasso Headline group of magazines (including Acumen, African Leader, Hospitality and New Agenda magazines), Plus50 magazine, Old Mutual Bank’s Prime Club magazine, SA Garden & Home magazine, Shaft Sinkers, Brooke Browde Communications, JSE Magazine, The Weekly Telegraph and others.

It was not long after this retrenchment Pam and I were taking a break in the Lowveld.

I had been debating whether I could afford to continue with a contract to keep my cellphone alive when I received a call from an acquaintance at Wits University to ask whether I could help out with occasional articles for the university’s internal publication, co-incidentally also called Reporter.

I did some writing for the magazine and also did work for the alumni mag Arena.

Some articles I had published were travel related and through this, I was accepted as a bona fide travel writer by an organisation known as the Association of National Tourist Offices, or ANTOR.

I was invited to their annual seminar/workshop where I got to talk to representatives of some 10 or so countries which are represented by the organisation.

VisitBritain organised an occasional freebie for me, such as a visit to the Chelsea Flower Show and a visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall, which was a wonderful experience.

Through this channel, I experienced a sponsored trip to Ireland through the Irish Tourist Board. It was an eye-opener. There were five journalists and their SA representative.

We toured half of Ireland in five or six days and nothing was too much trouble for our hosts.

On our return, I discovered just what hard work was entailed in getting several stories written, accepted and published.

However, having spoken to Old Mutual, Plus50 and SA Garden & Home prior to going helped gain their acceptance of a story in principle.

I was disappointed a year later to have to decline an invitation to visit Switzerland due to Pam’s ill health.

It’s said that there is a novel in every writer’s future, but I don’t even see a short story in mine.

I like writing factual stuff, material that can be researched and presented in a “reader friendly” way.

I enjoy writing personality profiles.

When I first embarked on a freelance path, James Clarke, a senior journalist at The Star and a top environmental author, called me and asked whether I was serious about it as he had been asked to do an environmental piece for a Cape-based management style magazine called Acumen and was too busy to tackle it.

I stepped in for him and found that I was accepted by the editor, Jonathan Hobday, well known for his stint with the Sunday media.

Not long after, Jonathan asked me to write a piece on Tim Modise, a rising star on talk radio who was just beginning to make a name for himself on Radio Today.

It was one of the hardest interviews I have ever done for it was done “on the run” so to speak. I had a tight deadline, Tim was pushed for time and we met in the foyer of the SABC, where we sat in the reception area with his producer flitting around like a berserk grasshopper trying to cut the interview short as there was a camera crew hovering to do a TV interview with Tim.

It was noisy and distracting, but I had prepared well and was able to write a good piece which Jonathan liked.

This was followed by a series of interviews with top business professionals who were without exception interesting, dynamic and driven.

These included people like Prof Johan van Zyl (then vice-chancellor of the University of Pretoria and later chief executive of Sanlam), Christoph Kopke (CEO of Daimler Chrysler), Gavin Pietersen (chief executive of African Renaissance Holdings), Piet Rademeyer (managing director of Pearl Automotive, importers of Bentley motor cars), Jabu Moleketi (then Gauteng MEC for Finance and later Director General of Finance), Mervyn King (South Africa’s corporate governance guru and author of the King Reports) and others.

With changing times, Acumen also changed and became a less prestigious magazine, its focus looking more at developing small and medium businesses.

Jonathan left and I was seldom needed in the new scheme of things.

At about this time, Margaret Moscardi, director of the Prisa, recommended me to Standard Bank’s communications department, which was looking for a freelance writer in their internal communications section.

I was taken on and helped out there for the best part of three years.

While it was good fun and I met some wonderful people, it was quite a stressed time, having to meet monthly deadlines again.

But times and people were changing.

The character of the newspaper changed and white male services were no longer a top priority.

One day Pam and I were in a chemist shop.

While she was getting a prescription filled, I was mulling over the magazine rack. I saw a mag with a picture of Des and Dawn Lindberg on the cover.

This attracted my attention as I have been friendly with Des since we were teenagers.

The magazine was Plus50 which, as its name implies, caters for folk over 50.

It was the publication’s third or fourth issue and I called the editor and made an appointment to see him in his Pretoria office.

We got on well and since then the mag has published several of my travel pieces and I have again been privileged to interview a number of interesting and wonderful people, including James Clarke, garden guru Keith Kirsten, classic guitarist Tessa Ziegler, jewellery designer and manufacturer Jenna Clifford, music maestro Richard Cock, opera star Sibongile Khumalo, radical runner Bruce Fordyce, prolific author Wilbur Smith and herbalist Pamela Cullinan.

When I started writing for Plus50 magazine, the managing editor suggested that I could possibly become his UK correspondent as Pam and I made regular visits there to see friends and family.

I haven’t forgotten that.

I badgered the press representative of VisitBritain to make a plan, but each time he reminded me that Her Majesty does not give private interviews, but I dream on and who knows, I’m told that dreams sometimes can come true.

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