Well, in the Get Your Shot, Steady Pom Pi Pi video, he did say “faster go and vaccinate”.
But perhaps not 131kmh fast.
Yes, that was the speed Gurmit Singh was caught driving at on that fateful April 12 night along Woodlands Avenue 12.
Fastest in Singapore and JB, and some say Batam?
At least he was not naked (presumably), unlike another road user who was arrested by police last week for riding a motorcycle without a helmet – or any clothes.
Even worse, no mask.
The naked guy has since been remanded at the Institute of Mental Health.
As for Singh, he was fined $800 last week and banned from driving for three months. He apologised on Instagram for what he did and said: “I hope to do better.”
If he was speeding, he must have been driving his Lamborghini, right?
After all, if the man who plays Phua Chu Kang is famous for anything else besides playing Phua Chu Kang, it’s owning a Lambo.
It’s like Ann Kok and that iconic see-through top she wore at the 1996 Star Awards. People still talk about it.
Whether she likes it or not.
The Lambo is Singh’s see-through top.
It all kind of started in July 2011 when The New Paper reported: “After a local magazine published in May a picture of his Lamborghini Gallardo that he bought last December, he has been called ‘arrogant’, even by a friend.”
Singh told TNP:
“I was very saddened by that remark. It’s very easy for people to jump on the wrong idea or label me as ‘hao lian’. I don’t like to be seen as pushing it in your face like, ‘Oh, look at how successful I am.’ People see me driving the car, but they don't have to announce it to the world.”He later explained to another publication:
“Once I got (the car), I started sharing with a few friends and by the time I shared with my sixth or seventh friend, one person said, ‘So show-off.’He sold the car after two years. It may be gone but not forgotten.
“I went, ‘No, I’m just sharing happy news, I want you to be happy for me that this guy from a poor Punjabi family who slept on the floor for all his life now drives a Lamborghini.’”
In 2017, a CNA reporter interviewed Singh and wrote: “This is when I decide to discuss the Lamborghini, a car he owned a few years ago when Mediacorp was still at Caldecott Hill.
“My newsroom used to be close to the open-air carpark and the roar of the engine signalling his comings and goings would penetrate the walls. Publicly, he was called a show-off.
“When I raise this, I sense his struggle to hide how such talk perturbs him.”
Singh told the reporter:
“I know you guys in the compound could hear the Lamborghini. I didn’t do it on purpose. It’s just how the engine is. I wasn’t trying to show off. I wasn’t pressing the accelerator.More recently in 2019, during the Not Again Podcast with Gary Tan, the subject came up again, but it was a less defensive conversation.
“To me, it’s not about materialism. I understand what’s been put into it – the effort and the blood, sweat and all that. It’s not just superficial. It’s like driving the Batmobile.
“It’s like people who buy handbags… I don’t get it. But I know they do. So I respect that.”
Singh raved about his Italian supercar to the interviewer:
“It was great having a Lamborghini for two years. I drove it every day. It’s my favourite car of all time. Love it to pieces.He added:
“I love it so much that one day when my wife said, ‘Get, we have to get toilet paper.’ I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go buy.’
“We have the family car and we have the Lamborghini, right? And I took the Lamborghini, drove to the supermarket, bought the roll of toilet paper, came back.
“She said, ‘Did you just drive all the way just to buy toilet paper?’ I said, ‘Yes, what’s wrong with that?’
“And then I asked her, ‘Do you want to buy anything else? I can buy it. Item by item, please.’ She said no! That’s how much I love the car.”
“I’m a simple guy, you know. I love Lamborghinis, but I’m a simple guy. A simple Lamborghini guy. It’s a contradiction, I know. Oxymoron.”In the same podcast, Singh reminisced about how he first fell in lust with the vehicle:
“When I was a little boy, I watched Tom Selleck in Magnum PI, a detective show. And he would drive a Ferrari. I said, ‘What a great car!’Then he spotted a Lambo.
“So fast forward, when I was able to rent a Ferrari for the weekend, I drove it. I was so happy… I couldn’t afford one yet. So I thought I’d rent it.”
“Oh, there’s a Lamborghini as well. So I went to rent a Lamborghini. I tell you, when I sat in a Lamborghini, without even turning the engine on first, I already felt it was way better than Ferrari. It felt like a jet. I felt like Batman.He might have just described what’s called a cargasm.
“And when I turned on the engine and sat that low, and I drove it with that low throttle sound – my goodness, my hair all stood up. Hair that I didn’t know I had all came up and said, ‘Hello! Hello!’
“Hallelujah.”
Also in 2019, he told 8 Days: “Till this day, I’m still missing my Lamborghini!”
But he can no longer afford one after an “epic reduction in salary” when he ended his full-time contract with Mediacorp in 2014 after 20 years.
So if Singh was not driving his Lambo, what car was he caught speeding in?
According to The Straits Times, he was “believed to be” driving an Audi A8 L.
Sure, apart from the “flapping sound” Singh claimed the car made, the Audi luxury sedan is okay.
Who knows? If he makes many more of those Covid-19 videos for our Government as the pandemic drags on, he may be able to afford the Bull again.
Hallelujah.
- Published in The New Paper, 14 June 2021
