Jeremy Gordin 1952-2023
I was sitting down to an early dinner on Saturday night when my WhatsApp bleeped and a good friend sent me the shocking news that Jeremy Gordin had been killed in a house invasion. Let’s not mince words here….he had been murdered during a house invasion.
The loss of a close friend due to illness or accident is hard enough to bear but a murdered friend leaves a gaping hole. As I explained to someone after I had read the news story on News24, I felt as though I had been hollowed out.
Jeremy (or JG as I used to call him) and I got off to an interesting start. Back in the mid 2000’s he wasn’t a great fan of mine. We both had columns in rival newspapers and when I finally got the boot from the Sunday Times in April 2008 he celebrated my sacking in his column that week. But the column was so elegantly constructed and the vitriol so exquisitely served that I felt the need to phone this Gordin chap and congratulate him.
I also suggested that we have breakfast together at a restaurant called Scusi in Parkview.
To cut to the chase, we got on famously, found we had far more in common than we could ever have imagined and that we both loved salacious gossip, especially if it was media related. Breakfasts turned into lunches and we celebrated our joint 60th birthdays along with Peter Bruce and a leading member of the South Africa bar at Sophia’s in Illovo back in 2012.
When my wife and I moved to the Cape JG kept in touch and paid us a visit to make sure that we hadn’t made the wrong decision and to sample my whisky collection.
JG was undoubtedly one of the finest and most erudite journalists of his time as his Politicsweb columns clearly demonstrated. Absurdly well read, always curious to learn more and a master of witty language. The comments following his weekly Politicsweb columns attest to this. But JG was also a man of the utmost integrity whose soul could not be bought.
My deepest condolences go to the family at this horrific time and I can only wish them the strength to pull through.
As for his fellow columnists and the readers of Politicsweb, Fridays are going to seem very empty for the foreseeable future.
