Older than Lee by seven years, Lim first met the future prime minister during the Second World War, when Singapore was occupied by the Japanese. Although scarcely out of his teens, Lee left an indelible mark. Says Lim: "I found him to be a forceful presence. First of all, he was physically bigger than most of us and secondly he was so self-confident. An outstanding man." Lim concedes that some people might be put off by Lee's swagger, but then he laughs: "I was cocky myself, too. I had a quick temper when I was young and I reacted to things very quickly." That's a trait that marked both men all their lives. Yet they are an odd pair. It is almost a yin-yang friendship of opposites. On one side, there is the slim, controlled, intellectual Lee, with his first-class honors degree with distinction from Cambridge University. On the other, there is the crusty, rotund, racetrack-loving, hands-on motivator Lim -"a most practical man," in Lee's words -who never went to university, but excelled in the local wheeling-and-dealing business school of hard knocks.

There is one common characteristic: They both tell it straight, no matter how painful to the listener or themselves. When Lim, the more brash and impulsive of the duo, was still in his 20s and trying to do business during the war, he was taken into custody by the Japanese military. Often, this was as good as a death sentence. To try to avoid that fate, most detainees were cravenly obsequious to their guards and interrogators. Not Lim. The Kempeitai military intelligence questioned him about alleged Communist links. Lim exploded and told them that was stupid. How could he be a Communist when he was a budding capitalist? It didn't make sense. Next thing he knew, he was being tossed out of the room -and not by the door. "I was thrown out of the window because I had spoken back to them," he says. Later, they whipped and beat him until he lost consciousness. "Afterwards, I told them they would never win our hearts if that was the way they were going to behave -and they hit me again for saying that."

But they never knocked the spirit out of Lim Kim San, and throughout his life, whenever he has encountered injustice or incompetence, he has spoken out forcefully. But though Lim's words might be tough, they are always sincere -and that's why Lee, also renowned for his lacerating admonishments, prized him so much. Well, that and Lim's no-nonsense practical strengths in organization, personnel evaluation and sheer "can-do" moxie. Unlike Lee, who was born with politics in his belly, Lim loathed it. His economics teacher at Raffles College, Thomas Silcock, who taught many of Singapore's future People's Action Party leaders, categorized Lim as "the least politically minded of the lot." His real forte was street business: cutting deals, galvanizing workers, putting up buildings, selling things you could hold in your hand. He started out in his father's company, trading commodities and running petrol stations. Then, when he married, he went into his father-in-law's sago-processing factory and ended up taking it over. He'd made his first million when he was still in his 20s. "I was lucky," he says.

Yet his bravery and strength of character met their match in Lee's arm-twisting prowess when it came to inveigling the politics-averse Lim to get involved in government. Says Lim: "You can say no to him, but you must have a very good reason for it." Lim knew that his friend, now the newly sworn-in premier of self-governing Singapore, wanted administrators to help out and he knew he could do what was required. Still, he tried to resist and stick to private business. It was no use. "Lee was very persuasive and he asked me if I wanted rascals to run the country. So I stood for parliament, but I told him that I didn't want a ministerial post. After I won, and two of the ministers lost, he looked at me and he said I had better take one ministry temporarily." Lim Kim San was "temporarily" a Singapore cabinet minister for 18 years, doing a stint in all the heavyweight departments -finance, defense, interior, education and national development. Not bad for a guy who dislikes politics, hates public speaking, can't write to save his life, and never graduated.

But he delivered. Especially in the crucial area of housing. At that time, in the early 1960s, the mass of ordinary Singaporeans resided in poor-quality dwellings and Lee's just-elected People's Action Party had vowed to do something about it -and fast. That's why Lim was asked to run the fledgling Housing and Development Board. Out of patriotism and fealty to his friend, Lim heeded the call. Initially, he worked under minister Ong Eng Guan, a fiery PAP ideologue whose oratory in Chinese (which neither Lee nor Lim could match) made him a great vote-getter. But Lim disliked his fellow PAP hotshot. "Ong was a rebel and a megalomaniac," he says. "Yes, he was a big boy in the party, but I didn't trust him. I told Lee that."

When Lim Kim San first arranged to have lunch with Ong, he quickly worked out that his minister was crassly trying to out-psyche him and put him in his place. "Ong knew how much I enjoy good food, so he just ordered something very basic -a bit of fried rice with an egg and a glass of water," recalls Lim. "Then he asked what I wanted. So I said, okay, I'll just have the same. That got him. Then he said he was a strong man and he stood up and bent down and touched his toes. I said I'm much older than you and I can touch my hands flat to the floor, watch. And I did it. He was just trying to put a bit of one-upmanship over on me." Very few can play that game with Lim and succeed. Within three years, Ong was gone and Lim was the minister. Soon after, in 1965, he became Singapore's first winner of a Magsaysay Award, for his work in the housing sector.

It was not just that he got residential units built at an unprecedented rate, but his on-the-job manner broke the mould for Singapore ministers. Recalls Cheong Yip Seng, editor-in-chief of Singapore's flagship the Straits Times newspaper: "He would be out there at the construction sites, checking everything, talking to the workers and the supervisors. Asking why it was not possible to do it this way or that way? Are you using the right materials? Very detailed and very hands-on." Once Lim noticed a serious problem. "When I was driving to my office, I passed a block that was being built," he says. "It looked as if it was slanting, so I called the chief architect and they did a plumb line. It was slanting. So I told them to demolish it." Just like that. And down it came. That was the Lim style. "No mucking about," he says.

Not that he and Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew did not have their differences. Some bureaucrats confide that Lim, along with certain other ministers, sometimes felt that Lee bagged too much kudos for himself -and displayed too much swagger -for being No. 1 in the party and government. On one occasion, when Lee discussed an issue with the top official in Lim's ministry without informing him, Lim rang the PM and ticked him off. He told Lee: "If you want to deal with my ministry through other people, then you don't need me as minister. But if you trust me to be in charge, then leave me be." Lee got the message. And indeed, most of the time, their working relationship was excellent. Meanwhile, as he knuckled down to his ministry work, Lim also learned how to become a politician -and most importantly, how to speak Chinese and thus reach the grassroots. Yet he still remained bluntly outspoken and instinctively allergic to lengthy missives and other bureaucratic trappings.

Even now, in the ninth decade of his life, Lim's attitudes are unaltered. "If you tell me something needs to be done, I'll do it," he says. "But if you write me a long letter and expect a reply -well, if I reply at all, you'll probably only get three sentences. Articulation and writing, no; organization and doing, yes." This is sweetly ironic, given that after his retirement from politics in 1981 and after subsequent stints running the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Port of Singapore Authority, Lim was appointed head of Singapore Press Holdings. The company has an effective monopoly on the nation's print media and hence is built on a foundation of "articulation and writing." He laughs: "It is the last place I expected to be." But he has been there 12 years now and has guided SPH to ever greater success and profitability. Says editor-in-chief Cheong: "His top priorities are to have a lean and fighting-fit organization."

Intriguingly, soon after Lim, at the ripe age of 72, became Singapore's media czar, he was tested in a kind of reprise of the one-upmanship escapade with Ong Eng Guan at the housing development board 30 years earlier. "I had never seen a big organization as disorganized as SPH," he recalls. "And there was a Mafia in the management." These entrenched senior executives tried to out-psyche him. "They knew I'd come in to sort things out, but they said to themselves: Don't worry, he's old, this is just a passing storm. Batten down the hatches for a while." He grins. "Then I started." People still talk about it today. Editor-in-chief Cheong recalls: "He went on a major pruning exercise and cut out what he considered excess fat." About a dozen top men got the chop. "You can't afford to mess about," says Lim brusquely, in what might be called Lee-speak. "This is a multi-million-dollar business. And the press is an important institution."

Another editor, Peter Lim, confirms that there was indeed no messing about -and that he was one of the victims. As a former editor-in-chief of the Straits Times, he had recently been tasked with launching a racy tabloid called the New Paper (whose genesis stemmed from a remark by Lee that Singapore needed a downmarket paper for ordinary folk). The new baby had first hit the streets a few weeks before Lim Kim San took over at SPH. It was having a torrid birth and was bleeding money badly. Still, Peter Lim remained sanguine, knowing that he had been promised three years to put it on an even keel. But then came a ultimatum from the new boss. "Kim San told me, Stop the bleeding in three months, not three years, or close the paper.'" By off-loading expensive expatriate staff and other measures, Peter Lim met the deadline. And though he left the paper soon after, he says now: "I'm grateful to Kim San for that very painful lesson in newspaper economics."

Although Lim Kim San made SPH more efficient and profitable, he never managed to dispel the outside world's negative perceptions about the servile nature of the Singapore press. He says: "That doesn't bother me as long as we are not a tool of the government." Come again? Is Lim, with his in-your-face honesty, saying Singapore's media is not government-controlled? "We must report the good and the bad," he says. "Singaporeans are well-educated, very clever and quite discerning. If we depart from the truth, we'll lose our credibility. They won't buy our paper and our circulation will go down. But, in fact, it has gone up. That is the best proof that we are not a government-sponsored toy." Well, maybe, but what about hard-nosed PAP politicos, like his friend Lee Kuan Yew, meddling in editorial content? He says neither Lee nor his successor, PM Goh Chok Tong, ever called him up to complain about a story. As for himself, he says he very rarely criticizes stories. "Only when they are completely out of line and you have to ask what it's all about."

Asking what it's all about and injecting robust critical input is exactly why Singapore's former president Ong Teng Cheong chose Lim to be chairman of the Council of Presidential Advisers. Ong told Asiaweek earlier this year: "Lim Kim San is very outspoken. That's the reason I liked him in the council." In 1993, when Ong was elected the country's first president, Lim's name had been mooted as an alternative "government" candidate. It was said that Lee tried to persuade him to run. But this time, Lim stood firm and rejected the offer. "It's not my scene. I would have been bored stiff with the protocol. I like to meet people, do things." It's likely he would have been too provocative, anyway. Even at SPH, he is not afraid of making waves. Three months ago, shortly after its launch, he agreed that the company's new upmarket tabloid, Project Eyeball, was a bit of a disaster. Even more controversially, he says the evolution of MediaCorp, as a rival to SPH (with both conglomerates bringing out print, TV and online products), is not a good move for Singapore. "We don't have the critical mass [for two media groups]," he says. "And you are introducing competition, which is very costly."

His comments also continue to ruffle feathers in politics, where he is unafraid to buck the PAP line. For instance, he disagrees with the exceedingly high salaries paid to Singapore ministers -a policy fervently defended by his chum Lee. "It's too much," Lim says, shaking his head. And he is critical of the composition of the cabinet, openly lamenting that in today's Singapore there is no way a savvy, practical -but degree-less -man like himself could ever be chosen as a party candidate, let alone become a minister. "That's why we will never get another cabinet like the one Lee had," he says. "We had various qualifications and backgrounds. That's what makes a good cabinet, not just 1st class degrees."

In his view, that simply leads to all the highly educated ministers thinking the same way -and all making the same mistakes. Despite these differences (or perhaps because of them), his views are still taken seriously. For many years, Lim was the PAP's key assessor of potential parliamentary candidates. Recently, Lee told Asiaweek that Lim was "exceptionally good" at this job -but not everyone appreciated it, especially the candidates.

One contender recalls going before the assessment panel and Lim immediately barking at him: "So what makes you think you're good enough to be a PAP candidate, eh?" Taken aback, the candidate made as if to leave, saying that there were plenty of scholars waiting outside to take his place. Lim then softened and told him to stay. "It was just a test to see what they would do under stress," he says. That candidate is now a three-term MP.

"Sometimes I meet chaps I don't like," adds Lim. "I shake their hand and I feel revolted." There's a sense that he harbors that sentiment about Singapore's best-known oppositionist, J.B. Jeyaretnam. "That man is mad," says Lim. "Being outspoken is all right, but he doesn't have the interests of the people at heart."

Amazingly, since separation 25 years ago, Lim has only traveled to Malaysia only twice. He says he dislikes the incessant backbiting and rumor-mongering there, especially among UMNO politicians. "It's a circus, the way they twist and turn. I've no longer any time for that sort of politicking." But he admires the country's progress. "Oil saved them, I think," he says. "So they probably have not missed Singapore [leaving Malaysia]."

But bottom line, what does Lim really think of his old mate, Lee Kuan Yew? Some whisper that Lim, like other "old guard" leaders Toh Chin Chye, Ong Pang Boon, Jek Yeun Thong and Devan Nair, is sour toward Lee for the way he always insisted on being No. 1. The talk goes that Lee was lucky to catapult straight into the premiership since it suited his talent for oratory, vision, and strategic thinking. Had he needed to deal with the nuts and bolts of running a specific ministry, he might have come a cropper. If Lim shares this view, he keeps it to himself. Publicly, he says that without Lee's leadership, Singapore "would probably be like a third-world country now."

When it is suggested that given his forthright manner and decisiveness, Lim is a bit like Lee, he protests. "No, no, no, he is more in control. He checks his feelings very well." It is true that Lim can switch off the professional side of his life much more easily. Says he: "Lee is always on the job and he finds pleasure in that. It makes him different from other people. Me, I'm on the job here, but I can relax afterwards and forget all about it." He still plays golf, visits the race track for a small flutter, and also keeps birds and goes fishing. Sadly, his real partner is gone. "I've lost my wife and it becomes a bit lonely." But he has six children, and of course, he has some three million Singaporeans who live in homes founded by him. That's some legacy.