Newspaper obituaries of the South African journalist Jani Allan reheated her unsuccessful 1992 libel case against Channel 4, which had accused her of an affair with the Afrikaaner rabble- rouser Eugene Terreblanche.
The obits reprised such ‘He doesn’t chase me as much as he used to’
details as her flatmate’s
claim to have peered
through a keyhole and seen Terreblanche’s white bottom bouncing up and down on top of the willowy Allan.
What they did not report was an unlikely friendship Allan later established with one of Fleet Street’s most observant Roman Catholics, David Twiston-Davies, letters editor of the Daily Telegraph.
The late ‘Twisters’ was a short, loud character with a taut pot belly and purple snout. Always ready to listen to an underdog and always open to the forgiveness of sin, he invited Allan to submit letters for publication.
This necessitated long lunches in London’s clubland, or those parts of it that admitted women. Twisters and Jani became an unlikely (Platonic) couple, she still wonderfully glamorous and leggy, with Farah Fawcett hair
and a drawling Sarf African accent, while Twisters, a good foot shorter than her yet twice her circumference, bawled forth in an accent that was part-Downside, part- Newfoundland, about saints, monsignors, Lord Longford and the Tridentine mass.
Jani, returning to the Telegraph offices with Twisters after one such lunch, was haloed with smiles. It was almost as if she loved old Twisters. And we can be absolutely certain that he never laid a finger on her.
