Passage to India start of new lifestyle

23 March 2007

SINCE moving to New Delhi in 1992, Lowestoft ex-pat Bill Adams has appeared on Indian radio, television and silver screen, as well as setting up top Indian organisations such as The Super Soccer Academy.

However, despite his success on foreign soil, Bill has not forgotten his Lowestoft roots and still keeps in touch with family and friends who live in the town, remembering Lowestoft with “great affection.”

Bill, 60, grew up in Stanley Road and was a pupil at Roman Hill School, and has e-mailed The Journal with pictures of the school's Christmas concert in 1959.

In the main picture, Bill is second from the left on the back row, and he remembers that Mr Naylor was conducting, far right, and that Robert Sabberton is on Bill's right and Michael Wade in on his left.

After moving away from Lowestoft in 1966 to be a policeman in Needham Market, Bill moved back and forth from Lowestoft. He returned to the town in 1968 only to leave again in 1970 after winning a scholarship at Oxford University, and then moved back in 1975 and worked at Birds Eye.

In 1976 he finally moved away for good, settling in Yorkshire in order to study at teacher training college and later lecturing in Behavioural Sciences and Communications at a variety of universities.

It was while Bill was writing for BBC Radio, from 1988 to 1991, that he met the love of his life, Abha. The couple moved to India in 1992 and are now happily married.

For the first three years in New Delhi, Bill taught personal management and presentation skills at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). He is now CEO and owner of Communicators Training Services, director of Catalyst Social Development Consultants Pvt Ltd, a partner in the Abha Adams Education Consultancy, which has just gone international with their first training contract in Dubai, and is director and owner of The Super Soccer Academy, the premiere football academy in India.

Bill also writes for brochures and articles, and has written a number of books such as the international best seller The Five Lessons of Life.

He has contributed a large section on soccer and education in India, in a book entitled Indian Soccer: Past Present and Future, which was published in the UK in 2001. Bill's next book is tentatively titled Teaching Your Child What is not Taught in School, which is due to be published in 2008.

Since the age of 50 Bill has taken up acting and has appeared in four films after he was recommended to India's top casting director, Uma De Cunha.

He said: “Film companies in India are always looking for Brits for movies about the Raj - so I get lots of offers to play fat old colonels. I only do bit parts, but it is a fun, interesting experience. Location shooting is a big party.”

Bill played the father of a teenage girl in The Basement, directed by Salam Strudwick, the explorer Sir William Lampton in award winning director Pankaj Botalier's The Great Arc, pictured right, which also starred India's famous actor Naseeruddin Shah and appeared in Potovanje Predalec, a four part mini-series made for Slovenian television.

Local Journal readers may recognise him from The Last Viceroy, a drama made for Channel Four, in which he played the Governor of Madras.

Bill also voices FM commercials from time to time, the longest running being for the Pall Mall department store in Delhi, and the biggest campaign being for Maruti cars, who are India's leading car maker.

Bill has two sons, Ben, 31, Sean, 22, and a foster daughter, Chanda, who is around 18. Chanda was a street child, and did not know her age or birthday when Bill and Abha took her in nine years ago.

The picture shows Bill, back left, next to one of his sons Sean, Abha, front left, their friend Meenakshi Gopinath, centre front and his mother in law, front right.

The fourth picture, inset, shows Bill on Lowestoft beach with his friends in 1964. Front left is Roy Brewer, who Bill met after he left school, Lee Baldry is in the centre, who he has known since they were both babies and Bob Bowles is on the right, who he met at Roman Hill. Bill is at the back.