RETIRED broadcaster, television producer and journalist Foong Choon Hon, last remembered for his role in turning a 160-year-old villa in Balestier into the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall, died suddenly on Monday.

The memorial hall's former director who retired in 2005 was still a regular speaker on a Chinese current affairs programme aired weekly on radio FM95.8 though he was already 80.

He complained of abdominal pains soon after breakfast at his Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3 home on Monday morning before falling into unconsciousness.

'He was sent to Tan Tock Seng Hospital immediately but died on his way there,' said his only son, Mr Paul Foong, 37, a sales executive.

Mr Foong, well-known in the Chinese media, culture and community circles for his many contributions over the past few decades, is survived by his 74-year-old wife, two other daughters and three grandchildren.

Born in Gopeng, near Ipoh, Malaysia, he was 17 when he came here and found a job in a glass factory before joining Rediffusion as a part-time Mandarin announcer in 1950. He went over to the former Radio Singapore a few years later.

In the early 1960s, he was briefly former Prime Minister, now Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's Mandarin tutor.

He went into current affairs programme production and later pioneered locally-produced Mandarin television dramas such as The Awakening and The Army Series with the former Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, the predecessor of MediaCorp, in the early 1980s.

Read the full report in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.