July 31, 2026 — 4:24pm
You always knew when Glenn A. Baker was in the room. In the early days it was because a fez appeared above the crowd like a periscope scanning for mischief. Over the years, the fezzes became more ornate but progressively shorter, yet Glenn’s presence never did.
I first met Glenn – who died this week, aged 74 – in 1994 just after I’d become PR manager at CountryLink. He was standing drinking Coke at a travel writers’ lunch in Newtown. After having worked with many celebrities under Max Markson, I expected someone with Glenn’s reputation to have a rather large ego. Instead, he was incredibly approachable. We hit it off and later he wrote a piece for me on the Tin Trail to Condobolin for Off the Rails, an anthology of train travel.
I then moved to head up PR at Malaysia Airlines and we travelled far and wide – sometimes I was on the trips, sometimes I just organised them. Back then, Glenn, along with his great friend John Borthwick, had decided to transform travel into what appeared to be an alphabet challenge. Between them, they seemed to have visited every place on Earth alphabetically, with only Z proving elusive. I was delighted to help remedy that by sending Glenn to Zanzibar (well almost) – South Africa was close enough for him to finally get to the Spice Island.
