En Passant: People Mag talks to Me and Charlize

MY LOO LITERATURE currently is a recent edition of People magazine which Doris sometimes buys for reasons that escape me. This is the reason I am aware that Charlize Theron recently had a birthday, on August 7 in fact, and so did I, at the end of July.

For Charlize’s birthday, her 40th, People magazine published a whole lot of questions asked of her, and the answers she gave, and I wondered what my answers would have been had People magazine adventurously and as a world exclusive, asked me the same questions on the occasion of my 66th birthday.

* You’re at 70’s doorstep – how do you feel about that?

Eish! Surprised, mostly. It seemed to arrive very quickly. Tempus does indeed fugit, as they say.

* What in your view are the biggest changes that come with age?

I dunno – priorities, I suppose. What used to matter no longer matters as much, if at all. I think you become more tolerant of the people you like and love, and less tolerant of damned fools, and I think that as you get older there seem to be more damned fools coming to light. I think too that as a life-long reader, you realise that time to read is limited, is running out, and you become more selective in your reading. Yeah, that and more hair in my ears.

* Do you think opinions have changed for the better when it comes to men over 66?

I dunno, I’ve never been this age before, and to be honest I don’t think I have ever heard any “opinions” about men over 66, let alone ones that have changed for the better. The implication in your question is that opinions about men over 66 were negative – what were they saying?

* Have you reached that stage of your career when you don’t worry about always looking glamorous?

Are you mad?

* When do you feel most beautiful?

Listen, can we stick to questions that are likely to have answers!

* What do you do to keep in shape?

Shape? You mean what have I done to get this boep? Well, traditionally such a boep has been attributed to beer consumption, so I suppose you could say that I keep in shape by drinking beer. That and Egyptian PT. What’s Egyptian PT? Sleeping. I keep my shape by drinking beer and sleeping. Oh, and eating curry. And I live on the second floor of a block of flats so walking down and up 40 steps most days helps me keep my shape.

* What is the worst thing about being a celebrity, or in your case a newspaper editor?

You know what – this is the only job I can think of where we publish our mistakes. Surgeons can botch operations and lose patients on the table, lawyers can lose cases in court but they don’t publish their mistakes for all to see on Thursdays, do they? And yeah, another thing, why if people meet me in Spar do they insist on telling me at length about the pothole just outside their gate, or how load-shedding is stuffing up their geyser? And because of my job they obviously expect me to do something about it! Otherwise, there are very few “worst things” in my job, surely a lot less than in a lot of other jobs.

* What is your one guilty pleasure?

My pleasures now are all guilt free. I’ll even eat a whole camembert at one sitting, without a biscuit in sight, and feel less guilt than Mother Teresa washing a beggar’s feet. If I do feel guilt about anything, it’s probably not something that gives me pleasure.

* Do you have a philosophy on life?

Nah, I’m still formulating one. This past weekend, for example, I was contemplating the idea that we are all gods, lesser ones, true (and some even less that others), but gods nonetheless. Of course we are generally unaware of it, but it’s an interesting idea and it would answer a number of other questions. I’ve said this before: we’re all at the University of Life, but we never graduate.

* Looking back on your life and career so far, are there things that you regret, that you’d love to change?

You know what – regrets are pointless. If you made a mistake or a judgement error in the past, you did it based on the information available to you at the time. If events subsequently proved you wrong, how can you regret your decision? That’s not to say that I haven’t made stupid decisions, but you can’t regret stupidity, you just have to learn from it.

Obviously, none of my answers are that same as Charlize’s, but you wait until SHE’S 66 years old. Then you’ll see.