/ 6 February 1998

Who is … John Berks?

When a man’s gotta go …

Charl Blignaut

‘You’re late,” barks Eleanor Moore as if she had stepped straight out of a bad movie and into the swish Radio 702 reception area. “Six minutes,” I want to say. “What’s six minutes?” But the powerhouse producer of John Berks’s late afternoon show is already heading down a corridor and through the beehive of offices that run the country’s top talk-radio operation.

It feels odd to step from the outside world into this maelstrom. Six minutes on radio is like six hours; you can summarise the state of the planet on radio in six minutes. Even the jokes in the corridor are brisk; moving along, folks.

Earlier in the week the publicists at the station had dispatched a press release to inform us that Berks would be leaving his job after 35 years on air. Bustling along behind Moore, I reckon that a part of 702’s grand old man of talk must be pleased to leave this pressure behind. Kick back, go fishing.

“Not at all. I love all this,” says Berks when I am eventually sitting opposite him. “You know, I just got back from Cape Town. While I was there I had lunch with Gary [Edwards, Berks’s one-time air partner, now with Cape Talk] and he’s lookin’ so good, boy oh boy, kissed by the sun. That Cape Town vibe. He’s lost the Jo’burg jitters. Gary can do that. He is that kind of individual. Me, I dunno.

“You know, someone asked Bob Hope, ‘Hey Bob, why don’t you ever go fishing?’ and Bob replied: ‘Because fish don’t applaud.’ I’m not too sure that deep inside I don’t still need that applause. That’s the kind of person I am. I’m not sure that I want to go fishing yet … ” Then the mood changes and, without skipping a beat, Berks looks straight at me: “You know what, I don’t. But I’m not sure what the hell it is I want to do.”

Over the years, the most likely kind of newspaper profile you’ll have read about Berks would be the one that oozes controversy and tousle-haired confidence: “Long John Berks”, the tall man up to his prank calls and outspoken political tricks again, defending his right to say what he damn well pleases on air, offending the good citizens of 702-land, left, right and centre.

But the Berks I meet up with in his tiny, neat office is not that man. The new era of South African radio has left him both invigorated and a little flat. He’s not all sure where he fits into the playing field any more.

Radio 702’s recent audience surveys showed a radical decline. “People are restless on the dial; they’re still trying out the new stations,” says Berks. What he knows for sure is that the time has come for him to hang up his earphones and head out again.

It’s a feeling he knows all too well. He did the same thing in the late Seventies when he was fed up with the SABC’s monopoly of the airwaves and walked out of his position at Radio 5, enraging his young fans. He did it in the late Fifties when he was fed up with having been kept back in standard eight and walked out of Milner High in Klerksdorp, enraging his science teacher. “Well Berks,” said the teacher, “at least it’s comforting to know that whenever I travel on the railways there’ll always be someone I know clipping tickets.”

If they had been on radio at the time, Berks would no doubt have cackled his trademark cackle, put the phone down and muttered: “Boy, oh boy, some people … “

But back then being on radio was just an all-consuming dream fostered by listening to broadcasts of LM Radio from Mozambique on a single-valve wireless, pinning pictures of his favourite announcers on his bedroom wall along with the sports stars that captured his imagination. Those were the days before television; when radio personalities were the closest thing to megastars that a young Berks was likely to encounter in Sixties Johannesburg: Charles Fortune, David Davies, Rex Austin, Barry O’Donahue, Clark McKay.

As it so happens, the science teacher’s words were almost to ring uncomfortably true. In one of those Larry King-style working-class-boy-makes-good kind of tales, Berks, the son of a scrap-metal merchant, was to go from school to an apprenticeship in a Johannesburg soap factory, Dandy Polish, and spending his Saturday mornings taking elocution lessons from Colin du Plessis at the SABC. “I was determined to get on to radio.”

But even with his accent ironed out, he failed almost a dozen auditions for SABC Radio. And it was the same man, call him Mr X, that plugged Berks each time.

It was only after a stint as a questionable cub reporter on two small-town newspapers, and after Mr X left South Africa, that Gerry Wilmot opened the door for Berks to become an LM announcer in 1964. Leaning back in his chair, he masterfully drags the past into his small office. “Before you were born, boyo … ” Berks has flair, that you can’t deny. It’s a nostalgic, trenchcoat-and-fedora kind of flair. Say “Frank Sinatra” and a glint flickers in his eyes.

“Mel Torme, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett … Beauuutiful music.” When he talks about the old days, his voice softens and changes register. The man is a born communicator, his large frame inside a tiny office, hands flying in the air to sketch a point. You can almost imagine them casting shadows around a campfire.

“If you think this office is small, you should have seen the studios at Swazi Radio.” It was at Swazi that he met a young wannabe called Stan Katz who dreamed of a job in radio. “Yeah, I think there’s something in the library,” said Berks.

It has been 35 years and in that time Berks, along with Katz — who went on to help set up the Primedia operation and become something of a local media mogul — has been a forerunner of a new kind of American-inspired radio in South Africa. He has fought for independent radio; spoken candidly about his salary as the country’s best-paid jock in order to set new standards; led the race to establish radio’s cult of the personality; and he became the first broadcaster to drop the canned applause and go live with a talk show, airing views that are singularly personal.

“Love him or hate him” is the phrase that most journalists like to use to precede the name John Berks. And it is more often than not women who apply it; those who love him and those who hate him; those who queue up outside the studio offering gifts and those who call him a sexist pig for the way he handles women callers on his show. Or those, like fellow talk host John Qwelane, who would tend to agree with listeners who call Berks racist.

Berks himself is no doubt perfectly happy with these accusations. It means he is fulfilling his mission to engender opinions, instil debate, communicate. Like Qwelane, he speaks his mind.

But I am not in his office to discuss the virtues of talk radio. Berks has more than proven those. What I want to know is what his plans are now.

“I really don’t know. Honestly.”

“Okay, say you were to start a new station. How would it differ from 702?”

“Well, Primedia owns the talk-radio rights. My choice would be golden oldies, beautiful music. Specifically from the Sixties, not across the board like Highveld. But there’s no gap. You get me? I wanna make this clear. I don’t think the Independent Broadcasting Authority will find the space for a golden-oldie station, that’s the thing.”

Outlining his views on the new radio landscape, as when he’s outlining his views on race, crime or the government, three words pepper his conversation: “You get me?” God knows, he’s been misinterpreted in the press before. But it’s more than just being quoted accurately. Berks wants to get his views across clearly on why he would make a station of white talk hosts for white listeners. Because that’s who he is and who he identifies with. Hell, YFM, the hip youth station, does black radio for black listeners and it’s not charged with racism.

But despite a strikingly eloquent monologue on the power of the spoken word, there’s an air of resignation when he talks about radio now. He needs time out.

“And doing a talk show on TV?”

The spark is back. He did a talk gig on M- Net in 1993 and really got into it. Now we’re talking. A Larry King kind of one-on- one show, not necessarily audience participation.

It’s perfectly likely that that’s where Berks could land up. After all, he’s always realised his dreams and he’s perfect TV- talk material. He has timing, like Oprah, not Felicia. He’s a natural-born inquisitor. Although he doesn’t yet know what the future holds, one thing is sure: the fish are safe for the time being.

ENDS