Finally, closure for Bullard - and the end of 'Out to Lunch'

Now, with the demise of the NewsTime website, Bullard (@lunchout2) is hanging up his boots after 17 years in journalism. He tells Bizcommunity.com why he doesn't regret giving up the financial markets for journalism, even though things ended so badly with the Sunday Times, and why he's happy to finally stop writing 'Out to Lunch'.

Bizcommunity: Most people associate you with your epic battle with the Sunday Times since they sacked you. But remind me - how did you move into journalism from the bonds market?
David Bullard: I was writing my column on an I-Net screen when I was running my company and the Sunday Times suggested that I write a column in Business Times. I think they thought it would be about business but you couldn't really write about the financial markets every week because it would have been unbelievably tedious.

Initially, it started as a fortnightly column and then within a month or two it became weekly and there was more political and general comment... By the end of 1994 I was quite well known or notorious. Either/or. Then it took another couple of years to really get on the map.

Biz: It started off on the inside pages of Business Times and then you replaced Stephen Mulholland (previously SAAN MD and now a columnist with FinWeek) on the front of the appointments section of Business Times, which was a primo space.
Bullard: Yes, we had an exchange of emails back in in 2003 that were very rude.

Biz: Who, you and Mulholland?
Bullard: Yes, he had a sense of humour and now we have lunch and we're good friends. But [I emailed him] because I needed to get the feel of the pitch [for the space left vacant by Mulholland when he stopped writing for Business Times]. And then I said to Business Times "I don't mind going on that space." I knew enough about newspapers that above the fold, front page [of the appointments section] was where you wanted to be.

Biz: What company were you running before you joined Business Times? You were a bond dealer, weren't you?
Bullard: I had a company called Johannesburg Options Market. I was one of the guys along with GT Ferreira and Paul Harris [who] started the derivatives market [in SA] in '83/'84. Then I was with a merchant bank for a while and then I started my own company and ran it for 10 years and we traded in bonds.

Biz: So you had a mid-life career change from the financial markets to journalism. Do you regret that change now, given how badly it all ended with the Sunday Times?
Bullard: You know, Gill, it was the right time to move. The markets were changing. We'd had a major financial catastrophe in the late '90s, when the Asian markets melted down. We had a lot of people who lost a lot of money in this country.

I was in there [the markets], in what was really the golden era. We were turning over at one stage R14 billion a month [dealing in bond options] - just two of us. My clients were the Reserve Bank, Eskom, Rand Merchant Bank.

About a year after I left the markets in 1997, it really became very different. You needed a strong balance sheet for one thing. Now, we hadn't had any balance sheet. We had a R100 000's worth of capital and we used to go see people like GT Ferreira and say: "Will you deal with us?" and they would say: "Yes. If you let us down once, we'll never deal with you again."

So we dealt with all of these guys based on reputation - they'd known me since 1981. It was really a case of being mates - you knew each other and you trusted each other. You could never do that now - we could never have started that business now.

And nothing was transferred electronically. We had a guy on a motorbike riding around Johannesburg with bits of paper that had to be signed and ceded. I think back on it now and it was nightmare. But it was a very profitable nightmare and it was a lot of fun...

But I had done it for 24 years and I actually wanted a change. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that "Out to Lunch" would last so many years and that it would turn into travel writing and motoring writing and a TV show and all the other things that were such fun.

Biz: "Out to Lunch" deliberately set out to push buttons and push the envelope. Was it originally conceived that way?
Bullard: Ja, they wanted to draw people into the paper so it was outlandish. Mondli [Makhanya, editor of the Sunday Times before current editor Ray Hartley] said in my second book that it was an equal opportunity to dispense lethal barbs. We used to get complaints but in those days your editor would stand by you unless it was a major crime.

I was asked to change things - I think three times in 14 years - once I remember by Brian Pottinger [Sunday Times editor before Mike Robertson). I had made reference to a gorilla after I think [former police chief] Jackie Selebi had made a [similar] reference and it was too close to the actual date. It could have been misinterpreted.

I never had a problem with changing things - they were very minor things.

But you know the column was designed to mess up somebody's Sunday morning... The aim of it was to pick up on the zeitgeist - an overused word I know - but pick up on what people were discussing or what people should be discussing that week and find a new angle. I explained it once as rearranging the Rubik's cube - 'everybody's looked at the story that way but how about this way'.

I can't claim to have believed everything I wrote because it wasn't that sort of column. It wasn't didactic.

Biz: Sure, you've got to take a line if you're writing a column. Did the Sunday Times or Business Times editors discuss the column with you or ruminate over it with you?
Bullard: Kevin Davie [Business Times editor] did and Sven Lunsche [also a Business Times editor] did. Sven was wonderful to work under - very sympathetic and very supportive. I had no relationship with Mike Robertson [Sunday Times editor after Pottinger] - I don't think he liked me at all. Brian Pottinger, I had a very good relationship with. Ken Owen [editor before Pottinger] described me as an accident waiting to happen.

Biz: I'm sure Ken Owen didn't like you at all - he was proudly working class and you're a toff.
Bullard: Ja, I came swanning in there [to the Sunday Times]. When I first arrived I had a Daimler and I didn't think anything of it. There was an awful lot of animosity, I think. I think people thought: "Who is this guy? He's not even a journalist and he gets a byline."

And when it went down [getting sacked] - and I think it was quite understandable - other journalists wanted to put the boot in. I was just staggered by the viciousness of it all.

But, you know, I had a marvellous time. I was overseas twice a month and doing motoring, I was always out of the office. And I always had access to fantastic cars [for car reviews]... It was like winning the lottery every morning.

Biz: And all of us [in the Sunday Times newsroom] got joy rides in your fancy cars if we asked. Lots of us enjoyed that.
Bullard: Yes, including the current [Avusa] CEO Prakash [Desai]. I took him around Zoo Lake...

Biz: Didn't you get tired of producing a column every week?
Bullard: No, it took me about 40 minutes to an hour to write. I always had about five ideas and I used to just hammer it out. But I'm quite happy not to do it now.

Biz: So you've had two careers and you're close to 60? What are you going to do now?
Bullard: Well, I've got a book coming out with Two Dogs publishers [of Bullard's columns of the past two years with the money going to charity]... And I'm very involved with a charity called Cornucopia.

But I think there's quite a lot of stuff I'd like to read and places I'd like to go. There's no great pressure. I'd like to do something I'll enjoy doing.

I can't say the "Out to Lunch" column will never come back - never say never. But at the moment it's unlikely and there's no great need for it. I think the media is a very dangerous place at the moment... it used to be fun. It's no longer fun... No one's allowed to have an opinion unless it's the right opinion...

Biz: So will you be having a glass of wine with lunch every day now?
Bullard: Well, I had several at lunch yesterday... there's a couple of things in the offing... a couple of magazines. I think what I'd quite like to do is leisure [writing] stuff... go away for a trip for a couple of days and write it up and not get paid R1 or R2 a word.

But I'm not going to sweat out a piece for R2 or R2.50 a word because actually I don't need to and I don't need the abuse that goes with it. I need to write in an environment where there is intelligent debate.

Biz: You've had a long battle with the Sunday Times since you were axed, writing about them and bringing an unfair-dismissal case against them [which Bullard lost in the court of arbitration of the Statutory Council earlier this year]. Did you ever think of walking away - that the battle had too great a personal cost to you?
Bullard:I'm still fighting it because it was an illegal sacking... I think if I'd walked away it would have been seen as an admission of guilt. I needed to fight...

I haven't even gone for money. I asked for any money [won] to be donated to charity. I've asked for an apology... [The manner of the Sunday Times sacking] was incredibly damaging and still is... they should have just called me in and given me 30 days' notice but instead they put it all over the paper...

Every time there's another [Eric] Miyeni, it's still mentioned - you know 'Bullard sacked for racism'. Well, it wasn't a racist article. If you read it intelligently it was all about having someone to blame...

Biz: So how are you still fighting? Are you appealing the arbitration ruling?
Bullard: Yes, I'm appealing the judgment that I wasn't an employee... It could be another year. It could take ages because we now go back, into the big boys' court: the Labour Court...

Biz: Weren't you worried that people would think you were obsessed?
Bullard: I believe this is right [to fight] and if I do nothing else, I'll give Avusa's managers a headache... I want the last word because that's my ego, I'm afraid... And I think the reason really why I continued the column [after the Sunday Times] at Moneyweb and then at NewsTime is that I wanted to leave "Out to Lunch" on my terms...

I think that's why I'm happy to leave it now - because it's on my terms. That's a bit of closure I never had with the Sunday Times.

For more:

• Bizcommunity: Times up for NewsTime, August 2011
  
• Bizcommunity: Sunday Times fires David Bullard, April 2008
  
• Bizcommunity Search: David Bullard
  
• Twitter Search: "David Bullard" OR lunchout2
  
• Wikipedia: David Bullard biography