He might be 80 but he has the passion of a 20 year old. And this passion is entirely single-minded. It is all about advertising. Something he loves more than anyone will ever know and so deep that he constantly fights, argues, cajoles, insults and throws literary temper tantrums in an effort to get people to do it properly.
And talking of 20 year olds, it is the current young contingent of advertising creatives who find him the most tiresome. An old fogey who has lost touch with reality and who doesn't understand the modern consumer. That's what they say.
But, what they don't realise is that they are dealing with someone who has the wisdom to look back at mistakes and to learn from them. All he is usually trying to tell these youngsters is that they are making the same mistakes as the generation before them and those before them and so on. Right back to the days when Farqs was a youngster himself and made those same mistakes as well.
John Farquhar is opinionated, presumptuous, irascible and probably the most successful commentator and advertising personality in the country. Everybody who is anybody in the ad industry wants to meet him. Everybody desperately wants to show him what they do and how clever they are in the hope that he will give them some sort of positive nod in ADvantage magazine – something he has made the most widely read and popular magazine in the industry.
And he has achieved that by telling it like it is and insisting that everyone else who writes for the magazine does the same. John Farquhar has proved beyond all shadow of doubt that one can criticise companies and that this will not lose you advertising revenue. In fact, it will get you more.
He is the epitome of what a columnist is all about. He puts a brick through a window and shoots sacred cows but doesn't hang about to discuss with the gathering crowds the mess left by the glass or the blood all over the streets. He makes his point and then goes in search of another window and another cow.
I sincerely hope that John's passion is strong enough to prevent him from even thinking about retiring. Because somehow, an ad industry without Farquhar would be indescribably bloody boring.
There are a lot of us I am sure who are not just wishing John a happy 80th birthday but particularly wishing him continued health and especially continued passion to keep throwing bricks and slaughtering cows until he hits 100. And only then, if he is lucky, will we even think of letting him retire.
• To wish the legendary John Farquhar a happy 80th birthday as he celebrates 60 years in advertising, go to Bizcommunity.com's tribute page. See also Bizcommunity.com editor Louise Marsland's birthday interview with him this morning.
