By Joan D.
What do two adjunct professors attached to the School of Multimedia and Communication, Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus be up to in their spare time?
Well, one senior reminisces about life’s early days growing up in rural Bukit Besi, Terengganu in the mid-1950s to his colourful and hectic times in the intoxicating and psychedelic whirl of London in the 1980s.
And the other senior gets inspired over platefuls of spicy biryani and mugs of bubbly to immortalise that side of his friend in relatable words for a biographical masterpiece on advertising mentor Harmandar Singh or Ham.
Typical of many a Britisher with a sense of wit and wry humour, advertising-cum-creative guru Paul J. Loosley, who has lived in many parts of Asia over the past 40 years, reminisced fondly of being feted by Ham’s mother with her signature rice recipes, whenever both met during many an evening to excavate and reminisce about countless advertising tales almost gone by.
Loosley admitted that he had never harboured thoughts about writing a biography on Ham, let alone one that would be printed in stages, possibly in three or four books.
The first book, which was launched recently, delves into an era of the 1960s and 1970s – a time of Ham’s growing up years and his initiation into London’s colourful advertising scene in the 1980s and the advertising landscape in Malaysia.
Ham is indeed a character of many faces and personalities. If you were to name some, often he has been down that road before, from a nightclub singer to a copywriter, a publisher, an event co-ordinator, an author and even a volunteer for many charitable causes.
At RM50 a copy, this colourful book not only traces Ham’s own early encounters with advertising but also the formative years of Malaysia’s own advertising industry and many other brilliant luminaries who shared centre-stage then.
A must-read book for those eager to know what the advertising scene was like in the “good old days”, so to speak. It has the footprints of Ham and others who have made their mark in Malaysia’s advertising world.
Paul Loosley welcomes feedback at p.loosley@gmail.com.
–WE