by Thinus Ferreira
This is extremely difficult, since it's once again not just someone I personally got to know and knew for decades, but someone who was a friend, funny, very smart and always ready with super-sharp witty comments: The veteran investigative and media journalist, producer, radio presenter and TV critic Terence Pillay has died from renal failure.
The Durban-based journalist died peacefully on Wednesday morning at home from renal failure after a long illness that started last year.
I spoke with Terrence Pillay last, two weeks ago.
We ended the phone call promising that we will definitely go do champagne in-person in 2022 and gossip, laugh and just toast life, after two years of being stuck at home as the media and TV industry in South Africa largely did away with any in-person gatherings because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
I ask tough questions as a journalist trying to cover television in South Africa and yet I've never felt alone because Terence Pillay, who would often sit beside me in the front row at media briefings, would always ask tough questions too.
I chase scoops and breaking news and interviews and I never rest, because I smile when someone like Terence Pillay would for instance scoop who the host of The Bachelor SA on M-Net would be.
Terence Pillay was an ever-present reminder that news media is a highly-competitive business and that you constantly need to put energy, drive and passion into your job to be at the top of your game.
Terence Pillay made me insane, but it was the good insane. On media junkets for TV shows I would always think: What is Terence doing now again? Who is Terence speaking to again, now?
When we were not working during breaks, together we were incorrigible gossips. I want to blame Terence because it was really him. He would tell me stuff, and then I would have to tell him stuff, and then we would laugh.
No matter where we were together, we would say phrases and things that would be complete in-jokes that only the two of us would get of things we had witnessed, experienced and had to endure on set visits, media trips and TV junkets.
Terence Pillay was one of the absolute best at roundtable interviews, press conferences and media events. Terence worked the room. He knew people, and he made work of it to study up and knew what people did, their characters, and everything else.
Terence Pillay always put in the time and did the work, and entering any room, if Terence was there, you knew you could ask him. While the rest ran for a drink, Terence made a bee-line to go talk to someone to get a next scoop.
Terence was a germaphobe and when we had lunch or dinner in a hotel or had to climb into some bus or shuttle I would try and scare him by deliberately trying to make as if germs from some or other surface were going to touch him just to see him recoil in some-real, some-mock horror expression.
The hilarious and shocking stuff the two of us experienced and had to live through and endure could fill a book. And here's the funny thing: It's not just the two of us. Terence had that with lots of people.
In terms of South African television, Terence Pillay was brutally honest about what was good, and what was bad; what worked and what didn't. He didn't hold back to spare people's feelings and the South African television industry is better today because of that.
As others did, he shaped me in his approach in numerous ways and what I had learnt from him over many years I practise practically as a journalist covering television in South Africa. It's part of his legacy.
Over decades Terrence Pillay made TV shows, was a presenter of TV shows, wrote about TV, and talked on radio about TV.
He was also my friend and I will miss him.
