Barry Rosenberg

I’ve met a host of notable people in my life. Many of these I encountered as a magazine author, others when I did PR for a Yank football team, later any number of prominent souls during my years backpacking the world.

Altogether, rock stars, movie people, top athletes. Corporate honchos, politicians. Couple heads of state. A king.

If this makes me sound la-di-da, rubbing shoulders with richie-riches and glitterati, let me say that I never hung out with any of these types, even when invited.

Generally I found their off-duty lives and outside activities boring and shallow: humongous yachts, private jets and mega druggie parties don’t exactly match my notion of meaningful.

On the other hand, I’ve spent heaps of time in the company of Buddhist monks in Asia, Black power leaders in the States, even a rebel chieftain in Myanmar. Found them to be humble and real.

One chap of the one-percenter element I did grow fond of was the co-founder of Microsoft. Not Gates, god no. I’m speaking of Gates’s high school bud and the real brains of the pair, Paul Allen.

A big, chubby, shy but always gracious panda bear, Allen was down to earth and remained so throughout his vast success.

He had a pet fascination other than the techie stuff, and this was how we became acquainted: we both loved team sports and had realised early-on we lacked the physical tools to ever play at top level.

Instead we became ardent fans, and as such kept running into one another attending games.

We corresponded via snail mail, debating as fans do, discussing the merits of certain players.

Oh, and dreaming about somehow being connected to our favourite teams. Whereas I hoped to become a prominent sportswriter, Paul had somewhat higher aspirations. Even during his early hi-tech days when he was almost as broke as I was, the guy was intent on one day owning his home-town Seattle football team.

Years later when I came to live in New Zealand he wrote, “For years you were a hippie travelling the world, now you’ve moved to a tiny country way down in the middle of nowhere.

“You’ve really had an extraordinary life, man!” Right. And all you’ve done, bro, is create the biggest tech colossus in history and make yourself 20 billion bucks.

Not long after I’d moved to Ohope in 1986, he sent me a typical sports rave, only this time the letter contained a brief PS.

The company he and Gates had years prior started in a garage and which now was bringing in the big bucks was about to go public, and he urged me to buy in at the initial offering of US$21 a share. I laughed. I’d just blown my entire stash on a house on a beautiful seven mile beach and could just barely pay the rates.

So Paul Allen sent me a birthday present: 48 shares – my age – of Microsoft stock. (Later I discovered he’d done this sort of thing with a host of people.)

“Hold on to these,” he wrote, “and you’ll be rich one day!”

Indeed, I held on to them. For a year. Made myself a tidy profit. I recently figured that if I’d kept those shares, I’d now be in a position to – oh, never mind. Rosenberg the financial genius. Sigh.

Meantime, Paul purchased not only his beloved Seattle Seahawks football team, but as well the nearby Portland Trailblazers basketball franchise.

He poured millions into his obsessions, his teams did extremely well, and he attended every home game, famously standing – never sitting – in his special owner’s private box, cheering and jumping around to the delight of fans and even his players.

Paul Allen, mega-billionaire, sporting clubs maven, super geek and a hell of a nice fella, died in 2018, age 65. He’d never married, never, so far as I know, had a girlfriend.

Gates, on the other hand, always had an eye for the chicks. And as it’s lately been revealed, he rather prefers his chicks quite newly hatched.