Yam Ledesma: So new, so controversial

When the Star Awards for TV named Yam Ledesma its Most Promising New Female TV Personality recently, some people didn’t think twice about casting the first stone at her.

Yam – and her moneyed family – owners of MMG, which is into film and recording, among others, was accused of buying her award.

The petite performer got the surprise of her life, to say the least.

"It was because I didn’t buy that award," Yam reasons out at the presscon of Bro… Kahit Saan Enkwentro.

Dampened but not defeated, Yam took her manager Wowie Rojas’ advice: Don’t give up. The talks will die down in due time. And it did. Today, Yam has hurdled her first acid test as a showbiz performer: intrigue.

"That’s what it’s all about in the first place," she shrugs. "Besides," she adds, smiling, "in showbiz, you’re nothing if you’re not the target of intrigues."

Crying time is over. Yam has even turned that intrigue into something positive: a challenge to work harder.

Her first award tucked under her arm, Yam is working as if there’s no tomorrow. The host of the daily noontime show Lunchbreak (IBC-13) says, "Before, I used to work up to a certain point only. Now, I make sure I exceed my limits."

Although she took up midwifery (she’s scheduled to take the board this year), Yam’s first love is showbiz.

She’d go with her director-dad, Roland Ledesma (also the director of Bro), and older brother Ronald on the set, and marvel at the klieg lights and the frenzied action all around. She even had a bit role in a John Regala film which her dad directed in the ’90s.

Yam was hopelessly hooked.

Little did she know that a friendship with Hannah Villame (novelty singer Yoyoy Villame’s daughter) would bring Yam even closer to her showbiz dreams.

"It was Hannah who brought me along in her shows and persuaded me to practice singing," recalls Yam.

Today, she and Hannah are together as MMG Records artists, and Yam concedes that "my most prized possession is my voice."

Yam’s lilting voice lent life to the theme song of the romantic Mahal Kita Kahit Sino Ka Pa. She has done a debut album, and is preparing for a follow-up. The former choir and band member (a group called Brown Sugar where she was sole female vocalist) now looks at singing, no longer as a hobby but as a profession, a lucrative one at that.

"I attend a lot of fiestas," she relates. Yam does not hide the fact that the pay is good in her short stints in Manila and the provinces, where she is usually called "Lunchbreak."

Yam sees nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is because of the noontime show that she fulfills that altruistic side of her, the kind who admires Mother Teresa for her ability to spread goodwill and cheer to a lot of people.

Recently, Yam and the Lunchbreak cast went to Boystown to visit parents abandoned by children who have no time for them.

Yam also had the chance to talk to battered boys. Last Dec. 16, she and fellow Daddy’s Angels (talents of Wowie Rojas) brought cheer to orphans in Tarlac and the Aetas in Angeles City.

Then, she helped treat kids under the care of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to thrilling rides at Boom Na Boom.

The learning experience is light years away from the theories Yam mastered as a midwifery student raring to turn doctor.

But its lessons in humility are worth more than what tons of books and laboratory work can ever impart.