Carlton Hotel

All other reporters, including me, were boxed out.

We were all in Joburg's Carlton Hotel, which was a second home of mine, always staying there, ever since I began covering Southern Africa in the early 1970s.

The previous night, I had paced the back corridors with the help of hotel staff members I knew of old.

We figured out by which route Mandela would be taken to the room where the network's cameras were set up.

Yeah.

So how do you end up going to France? Because you're in the Carlton Hotel, the world famous Carlton Hotel in Jo'burg.

Yeah.

And then you suddenly get offered a stage under Roger Vergé.