Pulse at eight weeks

The 8th edition of Pulse happened to fall on a very fortunate day — Friday the 13th, of 2004. It was our Valentine’s Day edition, and so the cover (shot by Justo Casal) was of a lean girl in a sheer red dress, and high black boots.

The thing was — she was sitting on a tree trunk, in a City Park. See we (Pulse) in those days were still ‘naturalistic’. And had not yet adopted the studio mentality that gives you all these sleek models that grace our covers these days.

(Here, put down the magazine for a minute. Is the damsel on the cover called ‘Grace’)?

Wayua Muli was the Pulse editor and in her editorial, confessed to a love for drinking endless cups of tea. (Compare that with our ‘tough’ editorials today). She also advised upcoming musicians to look at entertainment as bizness — not just as a chance for some airplay and hero-worship from smitten fans (sigh, if only Prezzo, riding high with Nawapenda wo! in 2004 had listened).

Patricia Amira was telling the world through Pulse that her top song was Ain’t No Woman Like the One I Got by the 4 Tops. You’ve heard of it? Me neither, kemosabe.

Down memory lane

Reel Time, then by Mukami Githagui, was doing three reviews a week. On our 8th edition, the featured films were The Last Samurai, Anything Else and Love Actually.

That weekend, the happening thing on the entertainment scene was the launch of the first of our imitators, a magazine called Entertainer at Safari Park Hotel. Lexxy and Santos, aka XYZ, were the lead entertainers for the launch. Both boys, and the rag, are now defunct.

Our then writer Rosemary Tollo took a poll on our celebrity Valentine couples. Eric Wainaina and Sheba Hirst, going six years strong and yet to tie the knot, were going to celebrate Valentine’s Saturday in Zanzibar where Eric had a show, but swore they were ‘getting hitched soon.’ (‘Soon’ turned out to be about half a decade down the line).

Mercy Myra, who had never had a Valentine’s date before, was in love with a rapper from the diaspora called Attitude. They went to America later and have never been heard of again.

Delilah was Redsan’s Valentine date, she is still his girlfriend, as she has been since the start of time, and probably will be when the world ends in a Big Rip.

Gido Kibukosya, now divorced from Suzanne Gachukia, was telling Tollo "the 13 years (of marriage) have been the best time of my life". There — unlucky number 13!

Model Coco Walchi and eye-candy Brennan Banks were the ‘yummy couple’ of the moment, and were planning to get engaged and re-locate to the USA. Where did Coco go?

Fareed Khimani had just broken up with his girlfriend a week before, so his dear mom was his Valentine. Then eight years later, the dude is happily married to some Swiss chick, on Changes and X-FM rock radio. You go, Hair.

Prezzo was single, planning to go play golf on Valentine’s then have dinner ‘solo’ at Village Market. But "if there’s some girl craving attention," he crowed, "there’s some hope for you. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you want me, come and get me."

Be careful what you wish for. A lot of girls went after Prezzo in time to come. And ‘got’ him!

‘Sisters’ act

Beautiful Eve de Souza was dating Nick Ghelani. But once she fell out with her ‘sis-in-law’ Pinky Ghelani after catfights at Capital FM, the domino effect meant Nick and Eve were no more, oh oh oh.

In the pink of love was Nameless, who told us he and Wahu were ‘just good friends’. They had been ‘good friends’ for over four years. The next week, Pulse ‘caught them out’ snogging and ‘busted’ the celebrity twosome.

In Caught Out, we had a late night yawning (now late Feroze, Nazizi’s kid bro), Vic Seii fooling around with Eric Ndavi, beauty queen Maryanne Kariuki with a pony-tail (and slightly plump), and Ambrose Akwabi hanging out with rapper Bamboo in a ‘Celtics’ top.

A drunkard holding a bottle of ‘Famous Grouse’ was in her cups. Whose? A giggling Debra Sanapei.

Scene @t was a third of a page and the Smitta had spent a day at Alan Donovan’s villa in Athi River, with its Egyptian bath once watering Imam (discovered by photographer Peter Beard, married to rocker Davie Bowie), video viewing room, swimming pool and view of savannah veldt with railway line running through it.

After chilling in this splendour with the likes of Fareed K drinking chilled white wine, Patricia Mbatia (then with DStv) send a Kenatco taxi at sunset for the Smitten, who then spend his evening at the rather tacky Tacos bar. Talk of from grass to gracelessness.

Current Pulse editor Charles Otieno was then the ‘Lord of Overheard’. On that 8th edition of Pulse, we had Bebe Cool launching his 13 track (thirteen, again!) Maisha.

Nameless and Big Pin had had a big KQ plane scare en route to Nairobi from Malindi, and Nameless shared his ‘last thoughts,’ stuff like ‘you think of people you have wronged, your buddies, saying ‘I love you!’

We are guessing it’s that plane scare that finally freaked him into saying the famous three words to Wahu. One and a half years later, they were hitched. And as we celebrate our 8th birthday, they have a beautiful daughter, Tumiso.

Rap battle

A rapper called Mwafrika (Makarios Ouma) was accusing two cops of beating and biting him. "They bit my wrist in an attempt to wrest my mobile phone from me, so I shouted to attract attention of passers-by (sic); that’s only when they ran away." Really, cops were like that? And mobile phones so precious, in 2004?

Rahim Jonzi, lead singer of Jomenes Boys na Band, was splitting from the group. They had had a New Year fall out with Big Ted over payments, and Rahim wanted to record a diss song ‘Robbin’ Robin.’ If you can remember it, Jonzi, or even Jomenes, kujia Sh10,000 from us!

‘Coca Cola Pop Star’ search was going on – and it eventually turned out to be — Kev, Pam and Sanapei Tande.

Our Pin Up that week was of a rising 21 year old called Charles Kanyi, whose only claim to fame was a song Furaha done at Mandugu Digital (but he was planning to do Sema Basi at Ogopa studios.) Our photographer Thomas Omondi had taken the pin-up picture.

Still don’t know who that is? Seven years and ten months since that issue, he is known as Jaguar. And he scored the monster local hit of the year 2011 with Kigeugeu.

Now, help us blow out this octagon of candles.