BORN Tam Pak-sin in Guangxi, China, Roman Tam arrived in Hong Kong in 1962. Five years later he founded The Four Steps, a Shadows-style band that played in local clubs and at tea dances, performing, like most musicians at the time, in English. He supported himself as a tailor, then a security guard at an amusement park. With a cross dyed into his crew cut, a teardrop painted on his face, multiple medallions and Lycra suits, his high-camp image was outrageously at odds with traditional Chinese society, and his many costume changes were a departure from the laid-back style of the colony’s established rockers, such as the Wynners and Sam Hui.

Soon after Tam’s musical debut, an influx of Mandarin pop from Taiwan demonstrated that pop songs did not have to be in English, and the music scene began to change. After his group’s first hit, The Price of Love, Tam left to team up with the roly-poly comedian Lydia “Fei-Fei” Shum, but this alliance ended when she decided, like many others, to sing in her native Cantonese. Still singing in English, Tam soon found his appeal was diminishing. His break came in 1974, when a talent scout took him to Japan. There he learnt about the music industry and “how to wear a suit”. He sang the theme to a hit Japanese television series and returned to Hong Kong three years later. In 1978 he reappeared at the Lee Theatre in Causeway Bay, and his subsequent success was such that just a year later he became the first Asian to play at the Royal Albert Hall.

Some argued that Cantonese — with nine intonations, and oi as the word for “love” — did not lend itself to pop music. But Tam’s ballad style, with soft harmonies and clear, crisp vocals, firmly established “Canto-pop” as Hong Kong’s musical voice. His sultry androgyny set a pattern for pop stars that is still followed by present-day Canto-pop giants such as Aaron Kwok, Jackie Cheung and Leon Lai.

Unlike Hong Kong pop’s present generation, however, Tam was a versatile entertainer who never stopped searching for new projects. In the early 1980s he invested a large part of his fortune producing Peking Opera shows — and lost it. He supported upcoming pop stars such as Ekin Cheng and Joey Yung (who was defended by Tam in the press after her arrest for assault last year). In 1987 he became the first Asian performer to appear at Carnegie Hall in New York.

He officially retired from performing in 1996 but found he could not keep out of the limelight. In 1998 he flew to Russia to record his golden oldies with the Voronezh Orchestra.

Tam was an enthusiastic supporter of charities, and rarely turned down requests to appear in government-sponsored events aimed at steering Hong Kong’s youth towards fitness and clean-living, although he would tell journalists about these bookings swathed in cigarette smoke and sipping cognac.

In March this year Anthony Leung Kam-chung, the Hong Kong Financial Secretary, lightened a gloomy budget speech by quoting Tam’s early television theme song, Below the Lion Rock. The song is known to three generations of Hong Kong residents, many of whom — like Tam — are refugees from hardship across the border. The song reflects a time when the territory’s citizens faced huge challenges, but also found new prosperity and confidence.

Known as Hong Kong’s “evergreen bachelor”, Tam recorded 56 albums, made innumerable television appearances and never really suffered a decline in his mass appeal. It is hard to overestimate his impact on Chinese popular culture.

He had a tireless energy and a lust for life that won him many friends. When it emerged in May last year that he had been in hospital for liver cancer, he moved to quash the story and made a special effort to be seen enjoying himself in Hong Kong’s nightspots. In fact, he had been told the disease was terminal.

Roman Tam Pak-sin, Chinese entertainer, was born in Guangxi, China, in 1949. He died of cancer in Hong Kong on October 18, 2002, aged 52.