Hubert Puglisevich
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Hubert Puglisevich born in 1939.
He studied at the Lyceum in Valletta, left Malta shortly after and spent the next 20 years living in London. In the 1960s and1970s, Hubert successfully introduced the Toyota car brand to the UK and built up a network of dealerships for the brand over the whole country, becoming a member of the British Institute of Management.
As executive sales manager for Toyota UK, it was Hubert who had the proud moment of posing with iconic model Twiggy with the Toyota sports car used in the 1967 Bond film You Only Live Twice. Despite his business success though, Hubert’s dreams were always of being a performer.
A true Puglisevich, he remembered from when he was a boy, his own father Joe singing and translating operetta into Maltese for the stage and performing for friends and neighbours in the backstreets and fields of Msida, using his long-suffering wife’s furniture as stage props.
Penniless and newly arrived in London, Hubert taught ballroom dancing in the evenings, took opera lessons and got a job selling highly polished, custom-made shoes at Austin Reed’s on Bond Street, where the first thing he did was get his ex-West End performer colleague on the shop floor to teach him how to tap-dance!
Next, he promptly landed the plum job of running the Austin Reed’s boutique on board the QE II in first class. His route was sailing across the Atlantic, from London to New York and back again, in the heyday of glamorous cruise liner travel of the 1950s, catering for the rich and famous and half of Hollywood. Alec Guinness bought him a drink at the bar.
The one and only domestic chore Hubert would ever do at home was from his time at Austin Reed’s, ironing shirts beautifully, down to the finest crease!
Hubert, always a socialiser and always a charmer, with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, managed to find the only Swedish girl in London in the swinging 1960s, in Chiswick and Richmond, who, according to Hubert, was so nice and clean and pretty and had such good principles, that: “ I had to marry her.” And it is Elizabeth who has stood faithfully by his side through all the years of rehearsals, late nights and committee meetings. With his wife Elizabeth, and two children Robert and Vanessa, Hubert came back to live in Malta after 20 years, to semi-retire, or so he thought.
In fact, by working conscientiously and loyally, running executive sales at Packprint Ltd, il-Marsa, Hubert became much respected by colleagues in business also in Malta. Parallel to which, he built up a flourishing career in entertainment.
Hubert has delighted us for years on stage, on Maltese TV, radio and in film. He’s done it all, serious and light theatre, quiz shows, musicals, Shakespeare, panto, doing reviews and stand-up comedy in hotels.
Hubert served as chairman of the MADC and brought the club round to being a Maltese forum for quality theatre, not just an English colonial amateur society, later on going to do the same at Atturi Productions, even travelling with them to Moscow to perform there. Hubert always considered the part of Norman, in The Dresser, one of his finest roles, earning him praise from a London theatre critic.
Hubert, like many of the war generation, always admired the thinkers and intellectuals of our age. He was a firm believer in maintaining a peaceful attitude towards his fellow man. Neighbours and acquaintances in Malta, the UK and Sweden, all can testify how well-loved, courteous and conscientious a gentleman Hubert was.
Hugh, as he was known to his friends, loved a drink at the pub with his mates, an Anglo-Maltese mix who have served him well in recent years. He was also a much loved and proud grandfather, who found time as a pensioner, after such a busy life, to play with his grandchildren Emilia and Lucas, in Sweden and when they visit in Malta. Hubert carried on to the end holding his famous monologue lectures at home from the armchair , in true Puglisevich style, on the art of life and living, to anyone who would listen. Because Hubert, a dreamer, an intellectual, a charmer, was always happiest when holding centre stage. If he was here today, he would say to us, as he said in panto: “Be nice to each other”.