When ex-Mediacorp colleague Darryl David was first introduced as a PAP candidate last August, he talked about the importance of speaking Chinese to connect with residents.
To quote:
"I realised that to connect with these residents, it's important to be comfortable with the language, speaking in English and speaking in dialect. My mother is actually Teochew. So I'm comfortable with Mandarin and with Hokkien because my grandma is Hokkien."
When asked if Darryl David could communicate with Chinese residents, here is what he said this morning at the press...
So I find it ironic that on Tuesday, in his first speech as an MP in Parliament, he talked about how important for new citizens to learn to speak English.
"At a community event welcoming new citizens last year, I observed that there were quite a few new citizens who had trouble communicating because of their inability to speak basic English.
"Grassroots leaders have also provided feedback: Some of the new citizens tend to not get involved in community events and activities because they feel that they aren’t able to communicate with their fellow residents of different ethnicities."
He went on to propose that "we can make it mandatory for potential new citizens to attain a basic level of English-language proficiency before they're given Singaporean citizenship".
So to be a PAP candidate, you must be able to speak Chinese.
But to be a new citizen, you have to speak English.
After all, he was a Pyramid Game host, like Mr Darryl David, who was just voted into office as part of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s Ang Mo Kio Group Representation Constituency (GRC) team.
Who knew that hosting a game show on Channel 5 could be a stepping stone to political office?
How about the guy who hosted the Singapore version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
I mean, he already has experience promising people money if they qualify. Isn't that what politicians do anyway?
Unfortunately, the guy’s name is Mark Van Cuylenburg, but he is better known as The Flying Dutchman (or FD for short). That might sound a tad too foreign to win over Singapore voters.
Maybe he could change his name to The Flying Singaporean (or FS for short).
But I believe many would vote for Hossan Leong, who hosted a game show called We Are Singaporean. You can’t possibly get more Singaporean than that.
Actually, you can because Leong has branded himself as “Singapore Boy” after his stage show called Singapore Boy.
I guess he really wants to double confirm that people know he’s not Malaysian or some other nationality.
And that he’s a boy.
But, of course, you have to be able to do more than just host a game show to contest in an election. You should also have some contesting experience.
That's why Goh, the aforementioned former Pyramid Game host, would make an ideal candidate.
Before becoming a TV host, he not only competed in and won the 1994 Manhunt contest, he represented Singapore in Manhunt International and came in third runner-up. He also won the title of Mr Personality.
And honestly, isn’t the General Election just a form of nation-wide Manhunt but with women and more clothes on?
If that isn’t enough to convince you of Goh’s potential as a candidate, let me point out that he was also a regular cast member in the local sitcom, Happy Belly.
You know who else was a regular cast member in Happy Belly?
A certain member of the newly elected Ang Mo Kio GRC team by the name of Darryl David.
Who knew that being a regular cast member in Happy Belly could be a stepping stone to political office?
Happy Belly also starred Lim Kay Siu, best known for his role as Phua Chu Kang’s nemesis, Frankie Foo. What’s more, Lim’s brother, Lim Kay Tong, played Mr Lee Kuan Yew in the movie, 1965. So the PAP connection is there.
Unfortunately, Kay Siu has never hosted a game show. So he is unlikely to be chosen to be on PM’s team.
But Happy Belly wasn’t the only TV show that Mr David acted in. He also appeared in several episodes of the local Twilight Zone rip-off called Shiver.
Who knew that working on Shiver could be a stepping stone to political office?
You know who else worked on Shiver? That’s right. I did.
Your favourite Sunday columnist wrote eight out of the 30 episodes of Shiver. Should I expect an invitation to a “tea session” come 2019?
Unfortunately, I have never hosted a game show or taken part in a Manhunt competition despite my god-like physique.
But I worked on Shiver with Mr David so closely in 1997 that 10 years later when he became some big shot at Temasek Polytechnic, I felt comfortable enough to e-mail him and ask him for a job there.
I reminded him of the time we worked so closely on Shiver.
This was his reply:
“Good to hear from you! Shiver? Hell, just hearing that makes me want to shiver.
“Thanks for your e-mail. At this point in time, we don’t really have anything open in the area of your skill sets, but I will definitely keep you in mind should anything pop up.
“Until then, take care and be good, my man!”
Did you read that? I’m “his man”!
Okay, maybe I really didn't work that closely with him.
Perhaps I should’ve asked the other ex-Pyramid Game host, Goh, who is now the chief client officer at an interior design company called Fide Living.
Wait a minute. There was another guy who hosted The Pyramid Game — Samuel Chong.
I worked closely with him on Living With Lydia! I could ask him for a job.
What I find amusing about Darryl David becoming a PAP candidate recently is not just that he was a TV personality, but for the first time, a PAP candidate is someone I've actually worked with before.
Most people know him as a host of The Pyramid Game, but because he was a full-time MediaCorp "artiste" at the time, the company couldn't just let him host one lousy game show. It had to get its money's worth.
So MediaCorp made him act.
The first TV series I worked as a scriptwriter for was Shiver in 1997. I wrote eight out of the 30 episodes.
And David appeared in three of them that I wrote.
So in a way, you can say that Darryl David was the Leonardo DiCaprio to my Martin Scorsese. (Not really.)
I also had small roles in the episodes I wrote, which was how I got to be in a scene with the future PAP candidate once.
That's me at the back.
Fortuitously, I just discovered that Shiver is now available for streaming on the MediaCorp website, Toggle.
So here is the episode, called The Lift, in full. (Video may not work on mobile.)
The interesting casting choice in this episode is that David's mother is Chinese, which reflects real life, but the actress playing his wife is not.
Another episode, called Miss Singapore, is the first script I ever wrote. In it, David plays a photographer opposite Jamie Lee. 'Memba her?
Here is the episode in full.
In the episode called Inside, David appears alive briefly in the beginning but is a corpse for most of the episode. As an additional bonus, the episode also features Tan Kheng Hua in a rather skimpy costume.
Here is the episode in full.
Before Shiver, David was a regular cast member in the sitcom Happy Belly.
David's date was a woman named Lynette Pang, who was a stage actress and had co-hosted a Channel 5 music video programme called Vidz.
I liked her. She was friendly to me. She's now Assistant Chief Executive of Group Marketing at Singapore Tourism Board.
So later, when I heard that David was getting married, I assumed it was to Pang. But it was to another woman, Georgina Chang.
Here's The New Paper report of the wedding in 1999:
IT'S true. Pyramid Game host Darryl David just got married.
Whoa, you exclaim. Why was there no news about it? Why no big newspaper story or footage on Showbuzz?
Because that's just the way Darryl and his wife, Perfect 10 programme director Georgina Chang, wanted it.
"I felt that a wedding was a personal thing, which should be shared with family and close friends. I've been to many celebrity weddings and I didn't want to have something like that," said Darryl, 28.
"I didn't want it televised, didn't want sponsorship or free wedding gowns. There's always some payback along with those things," he added.
Georgina, 28, was more blunt.
"Frankly, I didn't want it to become a bitch fest," she said.
She explained that after attending many celebrity weddings, she discovered that many people started bitching about everything and weren't really interested in the bride and groom.
"A wedding is a special day and we wanted only people who wanted to celebrate with us to be there," added Georgina.
As such, the newly-weds threw a dinner in a garden marquee at Fort Canning Park on April 9 where they invited only family and very close friends.
Which was ideal for Georgina, since she always wanted a marquee wedding.
For Darryl, it was also great not to have a wedding in a big ballroom.
"A ballroom reminds me of work. I host a lot of functions. I've practically been to almost every ballroom in Singapore. I definitely didn't want my wedding to be in one," he said.
They tied the knot at the Registry of Marriages on Sept 9, last year.
Darryl and Georgina met in university and quickly became good friends.
Georgina then left for Hongkong to work in Channel V in May 1994.
On one such trip home in 1996, Darryl and Georgina went out on a date - for the first time as single people.
"We've always had boyfriends or girlfriends before. That was the first time we were both single," she said.
Something special happened since it was a date that lasted till 5 am, said Darryl.
The relationship progressed - long-distance, over the next few years. Darryl went to Hongkong when he could, and Georgina came home as often as she could.
Finally, in February 1997, Georgina decided it was simpler to come home.
In April 1997, Darryl popped the question.
"One night, he just drove me to East Coast Beach, where we went on our first date, stood next to a huge canal, dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him. It was quite romantic. There were even romantic sandflies all around us," revealed Georgina.
The most recent newspaper report I could find that indicated Chang was still married to David was in September 2001 just after 9/11:
PERFECT 10 DJs Jean Danker and Jamie Yeo were worried - their good friend and ex-boss Georgina Chang is in New York!
Georgina is holidaying there after she quit her job as Perfect 10's programme director.
What a relief when she called hubby Darryl David late Tuesday!
He told The New Paper: "I know tourists usually don't go to a spot like the World Trade Center that early (she'd just woken up when the attacks took place). But I was still worried sick. Asking her to fly back may not be a good idea."
There were no news reports of their divorce.
At least, I assume David and Chang must have divorced because he has since married a lawyer named Christina Sim in 2006 and has two kids with her.
What I find curious is that despite all that has been written about David since he was announced as a PAP candidate on Saturday, so far no mention has been made of his marriage to Chang, who is now the Vice President of English Programming (Music) at MediaCorp Radio and can still be considered a minor local celebrity of sorts. (Like me, ahem.)
It's akin to Glenn Ong becoming a candidate and all the write-ups about him don't mention that he used to be married to Kate Reyes and Jamie Yeo (not at the same time).
I mean, David and Chang were a somewhat famous couple back in the day, regularly photographed together not only in the newspapers but also on at least one magazine cover, and I bet some people still think they're married to each other.
Even in this fluff-filled 2010 article in a magazine called Real Love Works (published by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth & Sports) specifically about David's marriage to Sim, there was no acknowledgement that this is not his first marriage:
It almost seems like everyone is now pretending David's marriage to Chang never happened. Was it all just my imagination?
No, it wasn't.
For online proof, here's a blog post by Mr Brown from 1997:
You may ask, why should the love life of a political candidate be a concern of the electorate?
Two years ago, when celebrity radio deejay Glenn Ong revealed that he was dating fellow MediaCorp deejay Jean Danker after splitting from another deejay Jamie Yeo, I declared Ong the Brad Pitt of Singapore.
The most common reaction I got, especially from women, was “Eeeeee!”
I had to explain that of course, I wasn’t suggesting that Ong looked anything like Hollywood movie star Pitt, a two-time Sexiest Man Alive and Angelina Jolie’s housemate.
I was merely comparing Ong’s three high-profile relationships with deejays Danker, Yeo and Kate Reyes with Pitt’s three high-profile relationships with actresses Jolie, Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow.
At the end of my explanation, the most common reaction I got, especially from women, was another “Eeeeee!”
So I wasn’t surprised that when Ong’s engagement to Danker was announced last week, someone tweeted: “Why is it that when I heard Glenn Ong proposed to Jean Danker I went ‘eeeee’ instead of ‘awwww’?”
Maybe it's because Ong has been divorced enough times to start his own Obedient Ex-wives Club.
It’s like the man is addicted. As someone else put it on Twitter: “Glenn Ong needs to go to wife rehab.”
In an interview with The New Paper on Tuesday, Ong said he struggled to kick the habit. “Deep down, I wanted to get married, but I also resisted it...I was stressing myself out over this for the past year.”
But like most addicts, Ong managed to convince himself that this time will be the last. He said of Danker: “I really, really feel she’s the one.”
Flashback to Nov 1 2004, one month before his second wedding, this was what Ong said about his future second ex-wife, Jaime Yeo, in The New Paper: “Our love seems to be growing, every day is exciting, and I know she's the one.”
Sound familiar?
How many “the ones” are there?
And why do they all have to be fellow MediaCorp deejays?
As another person tweeted: “I think at some point Glenn Ong's gonna run out of colleagues to marry.”
Also on Twitter: “Glenn Ong & Jean Danker to marry next year. Pundits wondering who else in #mediacorp he can date if it fails again.”
On the contrary, as a pundit, I know exactly who else at MediaCorp he can date after Danker, thanks to a reader who used to work with Ong (but didn’t date him, I think, since the reader is a guy) and wrote to me after reading my “Glenn Ong is our Brad Pitt” column in The New Paper.
On Ong dating Danker, the reader wrote: “We think it may be a fantasy going back to his Perfect 10 days when he worked with Kate, Jamie, Jean, and Georgina Chang.
“If he's after ‘The Full Set’, somebody better tell Georgina she’s next!”
Georgina Chang is a senior creative director at MediaCorp – and a former radio deejay. She also used to be a sports columnist for The New Paper and is divorced from Darryl David. She’s hot.
I'm not sure whether Chang should feel flattered or be very, very afraid.
In last week’s interview with The New Paper, Ong admitted that people might say “I’m on the road to becoming Singapore’s Elizabeth Taylor.”
Taylor, who died in March, was married eight times!
(Although to be Taylor, Ong also has to marry the same person twice and one spouse has to die in a horrific plane crash.)
So I was wrong. Who knew that when I called Ong Singapore’s Brad Pitt, I was actually selling him short?
One of Taylor’s most famous movie roles was Cleopatra, queen of the Nile, whereas Ong may be the king of denial when it comes to his addiction.
Friends don’t let friends marry eight times. Ong is almost three-eighth way there.
Someone should do an intervention and save him from himself – and also Danker from becoming the next member of his Obedient Ex-wives Club.
For the past few days, I have noticed a number of people stumbling onto this blog because they had googled "Shiver" and reached an old post about me writing for the show.
I was at first puzzled by the sudden interest in this old local drama series from the '90s. Then I found out Channel 5 is currently rerunning the show on weekdays in the early afternoon.
So for those of you who are curious about the show, this is some of what I can recall about it.
The series was first telecast in 1997 and ran for one (at the time record-breaking) 30-episode season.
Like most local English-language TV programmes, it was lambasted for all the usual things - lack of originality, crappy scripts, crappy acting, crappy everything.
I don't think the show was as bad as it was made out to be, but then I'm biased.
I believe the show was hampered by promos that led people to expect it to be scary, which it was never intended to be. The name "Shiver" didn't help.
It was an anthology series modelled after Twilight Zone, which people seem to forget wasn't that scary as well.
So it was very frustrating for us working on the show to hear constant complaints that the show wasn't scary. (Years later, MediaCorp did produce a show, Incredible Tales, that was meant to be scary and it was a big hit.)
Another problem that became apparent as the series progressed was the casting. Unlike in America where Twilight Zone was produced, here in Singapore, the pool of actors is much smaller.
So you would see Hossan Leong and Andrew Seow repeatedly star in more Shiver episodes than you would care for. Viewers got tired of seeing the same old faces.
Even I had small roles in a few episodes.
Yesterday, I chanced upon the second half of an episode called Animal, starring Andrew Seow, who played a guy bitten by a mysterious creature on Pulau Ubin and started to change.
I was shocked when I saw myself oncreen playing a doctor. I had forgotten I was in that episode. My wife couldn't stop laughing.
I had to deliver the ridiculous line (which I wrote) that Andrew Seow had rabies. It was my own take on the werewolf mythos.
Still, from what I saw, the episode held up better than I expected, but then again, I'm biased.
Today, there was another episode that I wrote and appeared in called The Lift. It's one of those typical Twilight Zone-esque stories where people disappear and no one seem to remember they even existed except the protagonists.
I played a guy running a comic book shop who asked Hossan Leong, "Are you on drugs?"
These were two of my favorite Shiver episodes. I had written a total of eight episodes, not including a script that was rejected because it had cannibalism in it.
Another episode I wrote was the series opener called The Hour, also starring Hossan Leong. The premise was similar to the movie Groundhog Day except it was more like Groundhog Hour.
I thought it was a bad idea for it to be the first episode because I knew people would accuse us of ripping off the movie - which they did.
Believe it or not, the excutive producer of Shiver had never heard of Groundhog Day which was why he made that decision. I had many arguments with that executive producer and one day I actually made him cry.
Despite this, I still have fond memories of Shiver because it was my first gig as a scriptwriter and The Hour was the first script I had ever written.
My other episodes were:
Brother's Keeper, starring Zachary Mosalle as a mentally retarded man (or is he?). He was nominated a Asian Television Award in 1998 for the role, which was based on my sister.
Miss Singapore, starring Jamie Lee, who isn't too convincing as an unattractive, overweight woman, later transformed into a beauty queen.
Inside, starring Tan Kheng Hua as an agoraphobe (or is she?) and Darryl David.
Conscience, starring Najib Ali as a woman's conscience. An interesting concept ruined by inept direction.
Year Of The Tiger, a Chinese New Year episode starring Robin Leong that turned out really silly because of garish direction by the aforementioned executive producer.
This episode was my attempt to write a modern fantasy-kungfu action story based on the Chinese Zodiac fable. What I envisioned was something with a cool attitude like Men In Black, but it ended up a camp cartoon like VR Man. I remember being told the radio DJs made fun of the episode the morning after it first aired.
I still think it would make an interesting premise for a big budget action movie though.
This was the advice from a wedding consultant in last week’s Straits Times report about wedding hongbao.
The advice was flagrantly unheeded by Christopher Lee and Fann Wong, whose sponsored wedding was telecast live on Channel 8 a few days later. They could've sold tickets.
The couple’s matching outfits were supposedly inspired by Bollywood, but were more Bolly-wouldn’t.
I didn’t attend “The Wedding Of The Year” because presumably, my invitation was lost in the mail. On the bright side, I didn't have to worry about the hongbao.
According to the wedding consultant, a guest should “give at least 30 to 50 per cent more than the cost of his dinner”.
If I followed this guideline for Christofann’s bejewelled Shangri-La Hotel affair, I estimate that the hongbao alone would cost more than my own wedding and possibly my parents’ combined.
The first celebrity wedding I ever attended was that of pre-PCK Gurmit Singh and his wife Melissa back in the mid-’90s. The dinner was held under a giant tent on Fort Canning Hill. Since it was outdoors, I wore shorts and sandals.
Actually, that’s not true. I would’ve worn shorts and sandals even if it was indoors in Shangri-La Hotel. So Christofann may have dodged a bullet there.
I remember at Gurmit’s wedding dinner, Pyramid Game host Darryl David and his date were assigned to my table, but then he quickly found an excuse to sit somewhere else, perhaps repulsed by my bare knees and naked toes. I tried not to take it personally.
I remember going up on stage during the dinner in my shorts and sandals, and making a funny speech, except for the part about Gurmit’s mother, which Gurmit didn’t find funny and told me so. He didn't seem to mind the shorts and sandals though.
What I don’t remember is how much I put in the hongbao. Wait, did I even give one?
According to the wedding consultant again, it would be “impolite” to “under-give”. So sometimes I sidestep this problem by not giving a hongbao at all.
Heresy!
Usually, people are so shocked by my shorts and sandals that they forget about the hongbao. I have no face to lose.
I understand giving a hongbao as a form of congratulations, but not as compensation for the cost of the meal - or worse, a donation.
Aren't the bride and groom working adults? Why is it on their wedding day, they suddenly turn into a charity case?
If they can’t afford to hold a big fancy wedding dinner at the Marriot, then maybe they should do it at McDonald’s. I love the fries!
If I invite you to my wedding dinner, all I want from you is that you arrive on time, enjoy yourself and the food, and don't insult my mother. Hongbao, long pants and shoes are optional.
But I probably wouldn’t invite Darryl David though. Nothing personal.
And if I myself don't ever to a wedding dinner invited again, well, I'll try not to take it personally.
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