Greetings and salutations, fellow stargazers. It’s a solemn day because Gurmit Singh has decided to end his full-time television career at MediaCorp after exactly 20 years. The man we thought we would always be able to count on to put on that curly wig and those yellow boots and make us laugh is his own man now.

On the bright side, he isn’t quitting the industry. A statement released by his management reads: “After a 20-year full-time career in acting, MediaCorp Artiste Gurmit Singh has decided to reduce his work commitments and devote more time to his family. Starting 2015, Gurmit will take on artiste engagements on a more selective basis, with MediaCorp’s Artiste Management Unit serving as his exclusive agent for commercial engagements.”

Still, it does signify the end of an era. And there was a certain wistfulness in Gurmit’s voice when he talked about how he’ll miss the TV station’s Studio One, and joked about coveting the CEO’s parking lot.

You’ve read our feature on Gurmit in the paper; now, read the extended interview here.

Q: Why the decision not to renew your contract?

In a nutshell, family. For the longest time, I’d been grappling with the issue of having a balance between family and work. I’ve always told my family, ‘There are good days and bad days’. Good days would be when I’m in between projects –which is very rare, actually – or an off day, and it could be a weekday and we’d be able to go to the zoo or something, and the zoo would be empty. Bad days are when I finish filming, I go home, everyone’s asleep because it’s so late, and then I get up and am out of the house before they’re even awake as well. The other thing was, I kept missing important milestones of my family’s, like birthdays, anniversaries. I think the audience doesn’t realise this but sometimes when I’m hosting a programme, there could be a birthday party for one of my children going on at home. Or it could be my wife’s birthday and I can’t do anything about it because I have to be there from morning to night. For the longest time, I was always struggling with that. And my family was always supportive and we made do with what we had, but in the last five years, I just couldn’t continue this debate any more, this argument within myself.

I started thinking, maybe I should open a restaurant or something, a side business, but that would mean I would have to spend time on that business as well, which means less time with my family, so that defeats the purpose. So, it was like a no-win situation.

Then, about last year or so, my family and I were having a heart-to-heart talk, and it got to a point where we were sharing feelings. I have a 17 year old girl, a 13 year old boy, and a 20 month baby. The two older ones shared that they did feel the impact of me not being around. Which was a big shock to me because I thought I tried very hard and I did a lot – for example, I don’t work on Sundays when it comes to outside engagements. If a company wants to hire me to do their family day or their dinner and dance, I’d say no. And there have been companies who have offered to double the price, and I’ve said no. On top of that, every year, I make it a point to go for a big holiday, two weeks to a month, with my family. But it seems all that wasn’t enough. And that really took me by surprise. I know I wasn’t there for some of their stuff but… If you had been there, you knew that they really wished that I had been around more often.

I guess I was living in a bubble, in denial, thinking that I was making all this effort and that it should be quite okay, but as it turns out, it wasn’t. Earlier this year I sat my family down and we discussed it and I said, ‘I can go part time. I have no qualms about earning less money but what happens then is that we all have less money. We can’t travel like we used to. (We always travelled business class.) We can’t go for luxurious holidays. A trip to Chinatown or Little India will be our holidays.’ I pictured that picture, that it could be that bad. My kids said, ‘Dad, if it means having more time with you, it’s a no-brainer.’ So that got me motivated.

One of the things I wanted to do was to make sure that I don’t do this without thinking finances. So we moved from a house to a small three-room condo in April. The people in the condo are surprised to see me. ‘You’re living here?’ ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘You like it here?’ ‘Yes, I do.’ (Laughs) It’s a big change in terms of space. But the sweet deal is that I am debt free. I didn’t have to get a bank loan. Same for my wife’s car. So as it stands, we don’t have to worry about paying for food. (But) the clothes have to be worn until they’re torn and shoes until they don’t fit any more. And they’re game. They said, ‘Let’s do this.’

Q: Was there one occasion you missed that hit you particularly hard?

There were many birthdays. But I remember, one time – this was my first baby. I left the house and the baby was still crawling. I came back, the baby was walking. I missed that. Just as recently as last year, my wife was alone on her birthday. I mean, not alone, she was with the kids, but I was at work from morning ‘till past midnight. Nothing I could do. I mean, I could celebrate after or before, you could say that, but if you keep doing that, after a while, it doesn’t feel right any more. So, it’s always been like this and I don’t like it.

Before my contract ends at the end of this year, I’m going for a holiday with the family until after the end of the year. Which means that finally, after 20 years, I’ll have a first New Year’s Eve with the family. So, it’s going to be bizarre. The kids will look at me, like, ‘Why are you still here? Aren’t you supposed to be there, in the TV?’ And it’s going to be very nice. In the past, when I do the countdown show, I’ll get a text from my wife and my kids: ‘Happy new year!’ But it’s not the same. By the time I get home my kids are asleep. If I can put it crudely, it wasn’t such a healthy lifestyle. As much as I have maintained that over the years I’ve been striving to make it as healthy as possible, when it comes to the bottom line, it wasn’t.

And now, with the third baby around, that also is a reminder: ‘Okay, I’m the third one, you’d better do right by me.’ I told my wife, ‘I don’t want to make the same mistakes I made with the other kids. Otherwise, it’ll just be a vicious cycle.’ As a credit to my wife, she supports the decision. As long as we can put food on the table and wear clothes, she’s fine with anything. But she’s also been the one who has allowed me to work for 20 years in MediaCorp, because she’s a stay-home mum. She has taken care of everything. From taking care of the kids, taking care of the house – we have no helper – to taking care of the finances. She’s my CFO. I don’t have money. She has the money. When I buy something, I have to text her. ‘Can I buy this?’ Then she tells me, ‘Can’. Because I’m a horrible spendthrift.

I’ve known my wife for 28 years and the first few months we knew each other, she realised I don’t save very much. When we were dating, I was hoping to save for a car. And I could never save for a car because I kept spending all my salary. So, she said, ‘Every month, I’ll put S$300 in our joint account, and you put S$300 as well, so you get used to doing it.’ So, we opened a joint account and after six months I said, ‘Okay! I can do this! I’ve found a new habit. A good habit. So you can stop paying now.’ One fine day – she was an SQ girl – I picked her up from the airport. I had this guilty look. I said, ‘You know our joint account? Uh, I just bought a car. But it’s a very nice car.’ It was a Daihatsu Charade, hatchback. It was a very nifty car. I think it was three years old.

She’s always been there to allow me to do this work. She was even there when I first started this. I had just gotten my diploma in computer programming. I was going to progress to Advanced and then a degree and become a programmer or a system analyst because I’m a bit of a nerd. At the same time, the (TV) contract came along. My wife – back then, my girlfriend – said, ‘You love doing this performing stuff. Try it for two years or so. If you like it, continue. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to your studies.’ So that was 20 years ago. Little did I know that I would take this path and here I am. So it’s been quite a journey.

And I’m a family kind of guy. I’m not the kind who likes to go out clubbing. In fact, it’s so funny, when I go for events at clubs, people will see me and say, ‘Gurmit, what are you doing here? Wow, Gurmit’s at a club!’ If I text my friends: ‘Want to go to this bar and check out the band?’ ‘Gurmit wants to go out! Let’s go’! It’s like the second coming.

Q: What are your plans for the future?

I don’t want to take this as a retirement. I wish I could say I was retiring and I have a yacht waiting for me and my islands all standing by. But I don’t. I still have to work to get the food and the clothes and pay the school bills and stuff like that. So, I will be doing it part time. I’m not cutting ties with MediaCorp. I met the management for lunch and they said, ‘We’d still like to work with you but you just tell us when you’re free.’ Which is a nice thing because I’ve never been able to have that privilege to say, ‘No, I’m not going to shoot tomorrow.’ While I enjoyed the work, I didn’t enjoy that I was taking so much time off from (my family). So, I’ll still be doing TV work.

Maybe now I’ll be more accessible to productions outside of MediaCorp. Now, maybe I can do more stage stuff, more movies, I don’t know. But I don’t want to do more stuff just because I’m out. I just want to take it slow for the next few years and really concentrate on giving back more time to my family. Just this morning, I was at the zoo with my 20-month-old. I’m doing things like that because I have to catch up. My wife has given 20 years of her life and I guess also the kids in some ways. And I want to pay them back. I need to pay them back. If I don’t, I’ll be a horrible father and husband. I told my wife, ‘If you ever come to a time when you want to do full time work and I have to stay home all the time, so be it.’ I’ve had my run and I’m not going to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t work now. I must perform. The theatre calls me. The camera is calling me.’ As much as I am blessed to have done something I love so much for the past 20 years, I enjoy being at home even more, with my family. My wife has said, ‘You’re very happy at home when you’re fixing stuff.’ When I’m just reorganising my CDs, for example, or fixing a lightbulb or repainting a table.

I think, at the end of the day, I could have X number of houses and cars and what have you. After all this is stripped away, the only people you’re left with are your family. It’s very important. When my parents passed away – my mother passed in 2001, my father in 2003 – it was very hard because it really brought home the message that you really have to spend as much time as you can with your family because you never know when you’re going to go. My mum was diagnosed with cancer and within a month she passed away.

For some people I might come across emo or just too family crazy, like, ‘What’s wrong with this guy? Get a life.’ But I think because I’ve spent 20 years in this business, that other part of my life has been left so wanting. And it’s even more so if you’re a family guy.

Q: Does 20 years of showbiz do things to a man?

I think it would if I was alone, if I wasn’t a family guy. I thank God every day that I have a family to go home to and they re-prioritise me. My children say, ‘You know, Dad, outside you’re a superstar, but here you’re just a father. You don’t impress me at all. You can sing? So can I. you can host? So can I.’ One day, I was thinking, ‘What if I didn’t have a family? What if I was a swinging bachelor, going to the clubs every night?’ I think I would really be quite a joke today. I think it changes you, you know, because the industry is such that it’s two faced. One side really brings you down, criticises you, puts you down, wants you to just die. But the other side – and it’s not always sincere, but it builds you up, it puffs you up, it strokes your ego, the applause, it makes you feel like, ‘Oh, I’m so wanted, I’m God’s answer to humanity.’ And it plays havoc with your mind. And it’s only when you open the door, you come home: ‘Hey, Dad.’ You have to do dishes; you have to help do chores. And that’s very healthy. It puts me back in my place.

Q: What’s the most flattering thing a fan has said to you?

I always tell this story because it’s so impactful to me. I was at CHIJMES. Three kids came to me and said, ‘Hello, Uncle. We saw you on TV.’ Then the mother came along and said this to me – I still remember what she said – ‘It must be such a blessing to know that you can bring so much joy to others.’ Wah. My hair is standing. I wanted to just lie prone in front of her and kiss her feet. Because I don’t expect people to come to me and say, ‘Oh, you have touched me.’ Most of the time they just say, ‘Eh, take picture can or not?’ (Laughs) ‘Eh, how? Eat already ah?’ Which is kind of nice also. This woman went beyond that. ‘Till today, I still remember that. Gurmit Singh was speechless. This was in ‘97, ‘96.

Q: Conversely, what’s the meanest thing someone has said to you?

Okay, it wasn’t mean but it was just kind of rude. I think it was a countdown show or something at the Indoor Stadium. I’m walking along the corridor and there are fans. ‘Gurmit! Gurmit! Come here!’ They were holding flowers. I said, ‘Hey, how’re you doing.’ ‘Gurmit! Can you pass this to Fann Wong?’ ‘Okay!’ A bouquet of flowers, and I had to give it to Fann Wong: ‘Delivery’. This was early days, ‘95 or ‘96.

But I guess the, if you really want to put this down, the mean ones would be the critics, the reporters… who I guess were just doing their job to bring more subscribers. It got to a point where there were personal attacks as well. It got so bad that I was doing Tonight With Gurmit and I was supposed to come to work but I didn’t turn up for two hours and they called me up. This was 1999. I said, ‘I’m not coming to work. In fact, I think I’m not coming to work at all, ever. I’m going to resign.’ Why? Because of the article that came out that week. I mean, I’m human also so there’s only so much I can take. I’ve learnt the lesson that everyone can say what they want and you just take it in your stride. You just see if it’s constructive and then you move on. But it’s easier said than done, especially when there are personal attacks. I said, ‘I’m just here to hopefully make people laugh, and if I enjoy myself while doing it, I don’t mind.’ But these people seem to think that I’m going all out to destroy people’s lives and just make you angry and frustrated watching my show. And forcing you to watch my show, to make you even more angry and frustrated. I said, ‘They’ve got it all wrong. And I don’t want to be here anymore.’ Then the executive producer used the F word and said, ‘They’re not worth your time. They’re just doing this so that they can do their job and it doesn’t matter. You still have your other fans. You still have the audience.’

In 2003 my father passed away. As I approached the mortuary, the undertaker tells me, ‘Gurmit, there are reporters outside with their cameramen. They’ve been here for a few hours already.’ I shout so loudly that the whole street can hear me – and there are other mourners as well – ‘I will count to three and by three you must be away from me, otherwise I’ll smash your camera. I don’t want you to be here.’ So, these are things I didn’t ask for. People might say, ‘It’s part of the deal, Gurmit. Deal with it.’ But who comes into the industry saying, ‘Oh, you can tear me apart. You can forsake my privacy. You can forsake my human rights. You can take away my integrity and just treat me like a little thing you can do whatever you will with’?

So there is a lot of rubbish that I’ve dealt with – and to think that I did it at the expense of time with my family. It’s time. It’s really time. I mean, life is short. I’m turning 50 next year.

Q: Do you feel a midlife crisis coming on?

I think so, yeah, because I was telling my family, ‘I think I want to do more stuff.’ Things I never did before. I was telling them also, ‘I’m getting very impatient now. Because I feel like my time is running out.’ (Laughs) Recently, Meryl Streep was quoted as saying, ‘I am very impatient now with a lot of people, not because I’m a diva but because I’m running out of time.’ I said, ‘The two of us are kindred spirits.’

So, I don’t have any – except maybe I want to drive a Lamborghini again, but I cannot afford that any more. I am always reminded that at least I had it for two years. It was a dream come true. When I was growing up – I come from a very poor family: Sleep on the floor, wear the same pair of shoes until the toes show through the soles, buy school shorts that are extra big so they can last through the years as they get tighter and tighter, get a new shirt only once a year on Deepavali. I was thinking, as a 12-year-old, ‘If I can grow up and have my own house and have a motorbike, or even any crappy car, I’ve made it.’

And then – I cannot thank God enough. It’s not because I’m materialistic but the way he – I remember at 13 years old, I was at my father’s workplace. It was a bank. And he was not a banker. He was a watchman. Every Saturday after my NPCC ECA, I would go over to the bank. My father would give me the whole bunch of keys to the bank, which was about four storeys high. He would go off home. And I would be in the bank all alone. My grandfather was also a watchman. My father was a watchman. And then I saw myself sitting there as a watchboy. I still remember the prayer. I said, ‘God, I don’t know how this will happen, but can you not make me a watchman also?’ Because my father was working two jobs: Daytime watchman, nighttime watchman. He wasn’t around much. The only time I got to see him was when we exchanged the keys. This started when I was 13 years old until I was 16, 17. I said, ‘If I’m going to have a family, I can’t have this kind of life. I don’t know how, but can you please take me out of this vicious cycle?’ And I saw how pathetic that prayer was because my grades were so pathetic. I was always bottom five of the class. My (two younger) sisters, on the other hand, were always top five in the school. So, I always told them, ‘I left the brain genes behind in the womb and you guys picked them up.’ One of them went on to do double degree, the other one a Masters. So, growing up. I always felt like a black sheep. I’d get looks or hints from my parents: ‘Why are you so stupid? Your sisters are so smart.’ I said, ‘I’m trying but nothing goes in.’ When I read bedtime stories to my children, I fall asleep, not them.

Q: So the Lamborghini was a symbol.

It was. The other symbol for me is the Fillet O’Fish from McDonald’s. When I was in school, I didn’t know how poor I was until once, when I was in Pre-U One, we were doing Economics. My teacher wanted me to do a real life illustration about price and demand and supply. So she asked me, ‘Gurmit, how much do you get for your allowance?’ I said, ‘I get 40 cents.’ And there was a hush. Everyone turned. I realised how wrong it was when the teacher said, ‘Never mind, sit down.’ Then she asked someone in front, ‘How much do you get per day?’ ‘Two dollars.’ Someone else: ‘Five dollars’. My friends would always say, ‘After school, let’s go to McDonald’s.’ 40 cents can’t even buy you a packet of chilli. I said, ‘I can’t go.’ I would make up excuses. I would starve myself so that by Friday I would have two dollars and would be able to buy a Fillet O’Fish. So when I got this job and I started making money, in every country that I go to, I will eat a Fillet O’Fish. Even in Singapore, I don’t just eat it. I stare at the Fillet O’Fish and I thank God. I say, ‘This is what I couldn’t have except on Fridays. Now, I can buy five of these every day if I want to.’ And I share that story with my kids. I say, ‘Don’t ever forget how far we’ve come. How far we’ve been blessed.’

Q: Is that all you ever order at McDonald’s?

In one sitting, I can eat a Fillet O’Fish, a chicken burger, a milkshake, a coke, a chocolate sundae and fries. When I started making money I said, ‘Hey, I can buy all this now and eat it.’

Q: What have been the highlights of your career?

I’m very glad to say that there are quite a few, actually, because the sad case would be that actor who just did that one show and that’s it – never saw him again. I’ve done musicals, I’ve done live shows, drama, comedy – I even had a comedy album out in ‘95. It was called Gurmit Goes Local. The projects were, I guess, very mass. They got a lot of support. Like PCK. I’m not trying to brag but even for me, I think, it’s quite a phenomenon that it went on to do so much that even we didn’t think it would. We knew it was quite funny but not THAT funny. He has done the Sar-vivor’s Rap during the SARS period, which was a great thing. He did two musicals, one for President’s Star Charity and one for the Indoor Stadium. He had his face plastered on the tail wing of an aeroplane that was flying between Singapore and Hong Kong to promote the musical at the Indoor Stadium. It was bizarre. I was on the tarmac with the aeroplane behind me. I could just imagine passengers going, ‘What airline is this? Why am I going on a plane with this guy with a mole?’ We became the longest running English sitcom ever. We hit more than 160 episodes, I think. It’s funny because when we first came out, we almost didn’t make it because we didn’t have any sponsors. Nobody wanted to support our show because it wasn’t a good association. Which company wanted to associate their product with a Singlish-speaking contractor who tried to con his clients to get extra materials for his own house? So, the first season, we were in the red. We didn’t make any money. But because we submitted our tapes to the Asian Television Awards, we won the Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Sitcom awards. That was the year we beat Under One Roof, which had been winning all those for the past three years or more. So we were like the new kid on the block that toppled this king.

To me it was a bittersweet thing because originally I was supposed to be in Under One Roof. Isn’t that interesting? As a character who is a pub singer and a bit like Joey from Friends. I was supposed to be that pub singer who comes in the day in my jammies, very blur because I just finished work. So, I was this close to being cast as a character in Under One Roof. Then for some reason, ‘I think we have enough so this character…’ Then, every time I watched Under One Roof: ‘I could have been in that show!’ Then they became big and I said, ‘Wah, if I was in that show, I would be so popular!’ The next thing you know, as life would have it, I ended up having PCK. So, sometimes, it just shows that it’s good to be patient and not be evil. Because I could have been very bitter about it: ‘Lousy show. It sucks.’ But I thought they were very funny – I just wished I was part of it. Then PCK came along.

People think I’ve only done PCK for the longest time, but I’ve also done a show called Knockout Carnival on okto for five seasons now. I think that was a very good run too. I enjoyed doing all those. Even Tonight With Gurmit; Gurmit’s Small Talk; Gurmit’s World, where PCK came from. Live On 5, of course, which was, back then, unheard of because it was a live show. In those days there was no autocue. So every Monday, when we went on air, I would get diarrhea. I was so nervous. Then the show would start and I would forget about how crappy I felt. Back in those days there was no autocue, it was just hand gestures from the floor manager, right? It was very stressful. I told myself this is good training ground. It was fun in a way. And I had a good team.

Q: When you look at PCK, how do you feel?

Actually, I was looking at him at Madame Tussauds the other day. It was very surreal. I said, ‘The work is amazing. It’s so real that it’s surreal. I feel I’ve just died and I’m the spirit and he’s the shell left behind. It’s almost as if he’s this other person that I have to thank for getting me where I am. Because with PCK I went to places that I wouldn’t have gone as a celebrity. PCK has even been welcomed by royalty.

There was one time I did a show in Malaysia and then a bodyguard, the aide of the prince, came to me and said, ‘The prince has summoned you.’ I’ve never heard that word – ‘summoned’ – unless it’s about paying fines. I thought, ‘Oh no, what did I do wrong?’ When I finally met him… he said, ‘I love Phua Chu Kang. I watch it all the time.’ That just boggled my mind because I just imagined – and this is how my mind works – him in his palace with all the gold around him, and it’s a huge living room, with just his throne, and there’s a TV there, and he’s watching Phua Chu Kang. And then his aide comes to him and says, ‘Sire, sire, your Excellency, there is flooding and there’s a landslide in one of your states!’ And he turns and says, ‘I’m watching Phua Chu Kang now. Shh. Don’t disturb me. Go away.’ It’s just, I never thought royalty watched PCK too.

So, he’s given me a lot of work, a lot of income. Some people might say, ‘Oh, because of his popularity and all that, you’ve been stereotyped.’ But I’d rather be stereotyped as one good character that I’ve done than be that actor who’s trying to find that character to call his own. You look at Sylvester Stallone, you think Rocky, you think Rambo. Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, you think Terminator. It’s really cool that they’ve got something they can call their own. So, I have no bad, bitter feelings about Phua Chu Kang at all.

Q: The thought that you might still be playing PCK when you’re old doesn’t scare you at all?

Not at all. But I also, at the same time, will be happy with the fact that finally one day, it’ll be done. And I see a trend because when he was on TV, I was going to Malaysia almost every weekend and sometimes I’d do two shows in that same weekend, so much so that production houses would say, ‘Can you please apply for PR?’ Now that he’s been off air for almost ten years now, I’m still going up, but once every two or three months. So, it’s tapering off.

Q: So, you’re not jealous of him for being more famous than you?

I’m not at all. If anything, I’m very grateful to him. Even when I walk out in the streets, people call me Phua Chu Kang more than anything else. They don’t call me Gurmit Singh. Bizarre. Last week when I was on the streets, someone came to me and said, ‘Is PCK coming back on TV?’ I said, ‘No!’ And I’ve gotten this for the past 10 years, you know.

Q: Why won’t it come back?

We already said goodbye. We already said thank you. I had the most perfect supporting cast. Sometimes when you work in a show, you can sense the other actor is hoping to get that extra funny line, the extra limelight. If that’s what you want, then go for it. But in our family, our crew – if that joke worked for you, we would give you the fullest 100 percent, make it doubly funny so that you laugh out loud and win ATV awards. And I thanked them for wasting their life with me. I said that word – not helping me but wasting their time. These guys are established – Neo Swee Lin. Kheng Hua. Kay Siu. The other people – not so bad. (Laughs) People like that – if anything, I should be second fiddle to their project. They should be the lead. So, I don’t want to bring them back again. I would feel very, very awkward and very embarrassed to bring them back.

Q: But when you’re 60 you might still be playing him.

I’ve been joking with Makeup. I said, ‘When I first started out I was only 32 years old and I had to put on lines, wrinkles, to make me look 40 plus, 50. Now, you don’t have to put so many lines because the lines are already there. Very soon, I won’t need to come to Makeup any more. I’ll just put the mole, the wig, and just walk.

Q: Did you get to keep the wig and mole?

When we finished the Singapore version, the first thing I did was, I told them, ‘I want to buy over everything.’ I mean, this was me being naïve. I was afraid that once we were off air, within two months, the public would forget me and PCK. And of course MediaCorp would have no use for these things, they’d just chuck them. But to me, it meant something. So I said, ‘I’ll buy everything from head to toe.’ I bought the wig, the mole, the nail, the chains, the watches, the rings, the shirt, the pants, the boots, everything. And I took it home. I kept it. Because I thought, ‘Maybe one day, I’ll give it to Planet Hollywood or Hard Rock Café or maybe some museum. Next thing you know, Madame Tussauds comes along. I said, ‘This will be the perfect opportunity to use everything, because this is the original.’ The shirt, the pants and the boots.

But the mole is not original because the mole is always redone and made new again. After a while it loses its, I don’t know what, lah. It’s actually cotton wool with makeup glue with black colour. And it gets squishy, mushy, and then gets stuck and becomes a mole. Then I have to use cosmetic glue to mold it to my face. But I remember I went through three moles and the third mole is one that I ate by mistake during a dinner scene. Now I have a red dot here where the mole always stays. Because every time I put the glue here. The reason I came up with this spot was for continuity, if the makeup artist changes. So we said, ‘Where the eyebrow finishes, line comes down, where my mouth is, draw a line across, where the lines meet, that’s where it is. It so happens that where that is, it also pulsates my tear glands. I don’t start crying but the tear glands are like, ‘Who’s poking me?’

They would always have two or three moles, two or three nails in a little box. The glue for the mole. The tape for the nail. I tried growing it long so that I wouldn’t have to put the fake nail on because it felt very funny. When you take it off, you’re like, ‘My nail!’ But then my wife said, ‘Okay, darling, if it grows any more, I’m not going to let you sleep in the same bed. It looks very gross.’

Q: So, what has been the lowest point of your career?

It was pretty low when Mark Lee and I did a show together. It was called M2M. I don’t know why it’s called M2M. Or was it 2MM? Something like that. Maybe it stood for ‘man to man’. I can’t remember now. See? That was such a low point I can’t remember why I did the show, even. But the premise was that my English is better than his but his Chinese is better than mine, so we’d make fun of each other and have fun. But the problem was that the audience’s senses weren’t ready for the way we were going to do things on air. So, the show got altered by the week, by the minute. And it came to a point where it wasn’t funny anymore.

I remember me and Mark Lee were in the bus, outside Great World City. We were putting on disguises to set up a prank where I would go into a bakery, and whatever the person took, I would take from his tray and put on my tray. Which is funny on paper, but the big obstacle was that people recognised us. So we told the producers, ‘It won’t work because people will know: ‘Eh, Gurmit, you’re wearing a moustache.’ And true enough. So, we took a break. And Mark Lee and I are two of the most animated, talkative people in the world. But this was Mark Lee and I in a bus – not a word. And Mark turned and said, ‘Eh, you happy doing this show or not?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘Not funny, ah?’ ‘Rubbish, lah.’ It lasted only like five or six episodes and then we just pulled it off air. So unfunny. We were trying so hard to be funny it was actually painful. Mark Lee and I are people who can actually do good stuff but if you give us restraining premises, then it just kills stuff. Then people will say, ‘Oh, they’re not funny anymore.’ They don’t see the bigger picture, that the show wasn’t funny.

Mark Lee is one of those people with whom I can just click like that. We were not friends before. The first few times I met him, we’d walk past each other outside Wardrobe and just throw insults. We hadn’t even introduced ourselves. I think because we knew we were both comedians. Then the next thing we know, every time we’re together for movies and what have you, the chemistry just sparks. It’s very rare to find that.

The other person I like working with is Adrian Pang. He is so talented. I’ve always said that he’s one of the guys, if he were given PCK to do, I think he’d do a darn good job, if not a better job. Because he’s so talented, he’s so funny. I went over to his place recently to borrow some of his winter wear because I’m going for a holiday. Half the time, we were just talking rubbish. We’re choosing socks but we’re joking about the socks. We just cannot have a straight conversation. We just go on and on. And I like working with him because he’s one of those who does not necessarily always want to be the one with the punchline. And that’s the same for me. And we’ve done some stuff on stage. It’s so fun. It’s so liberating, you know, without having to think, ‘Oh, this guy is so plastic. This guy has a hidden agenda.’

Q: From now on, you’ll have more freedom and more control over your life.

The shows I really want to continue doing, I will continue doing. But if they eat into my time with my family, I can still say no. And the best thing is that this year in December, I’m going away for a holiday. I timed it in such a way that I’ll be spending Christmas and New Year’s Eve away with the family. This will be the first time in 20 years I’ll have a New Year’s Eve countdown with my family. Have I said that already?

Q: Yes. Where are you going?

We’re going to Finland. See the northern lights. We’re going to Lapland – it’s the famous Santa Claus village. It will be minus 30 degrees.

Q: Ah. That’s why you needed Adrian’s winterwear.

He wanted to lend me his thermal underwear. I said, ‘Bro, I love you but not that much.’ He said, ‘Come on. Share some smell.’ I said, ‘No!’ so I bought my own thermal underwear.

Q: What kind of movies would you like to do in future?

I’d like to do any movie, actually, as long as it’s not pornographic. I’d like to challenge myself, to test my so-called range. I think I’ve done about six movies now, and they all hold a special meaning to me, so I’m grateful for that.

My first movie was One Leg Kicking. It was about football. I love football. Every time we finished filming: ‘Okay, cut’ – we’d still be playing. ‘Eh, cut! We finish already!’ ‘No, wait, let me score. I want to score!’ Then, after the whole thing wrapped for the day, we all stayed back to play football! As if 12 hours of football wasn’t enough. ‘No more light, we cannot shoot any more – okay, let’s play football now!’ So that was like having dessert after dessert after dessert.

The second movie I did was Sumo. What was important for me, doing the movie, was that I had just found out that I was of mixed heritage. After my mom passed away in 2001, my father sat us down and said, ‘Okay, look. I’ve got a story to tell you. There was a Chinese lady at the beach with a laundry basket and she met a Punjabi man. He heard a baby cry, and the cry was coming from the laundry basket. There was a baby in there. She said, ‘I actually came here to let her die on the beach’. Then the guy said, ‘No, let me have a baby. I just got married, my wife is barren, I’ll take her as my own.’ That baby was my mother. So her biological mother was Chinese and her father was a Japanese soldier. Whether it was rape or romance, we will never know because she never got in touch with her real mother. So, if you see my family photos, my mother and her adopted parents are so different. They are so dark and she’s so fair.

Q: It’s like the story of Moses.

Exactly, except that this one was sand. And a lot of laundry as well. So, for me to go to Japan to shoot this movie was like, ‘Wow, I’m coming home.’ When I landed in Japan, I kissed the ground, because there was this feeling that somewhere around here was some part of me, my culture, my heritage, my parenthood. Same goes for Singapore – somebody here, a Chinese, is part of my lineage, but I don’t know who.

Taxi! Taxi! was another movie that I was very keen to do because my father, when he retired from being a nightwatchman, became a taxi driver. He’d tell me stories. He even picked up a ghost once. Picked her up in the middle of the night, drove, and then he realised the colour of her clothes had changed. And she was very quiet. He never even bothered to ask for fare because he said before his eyes, the clothes just changed colour. So, ‘Drop you at Bedok, ah?’ ‘Okay! Thank you!’ (Laughs) Taxis go faster than floating around. But as an homage to my father, I thought I would take up that role.

The movie Just Follow Law – I think I could have done better, I always feel that. But done is done right. But what was strange about it was that it got me one of my biggest accolades ever because I was nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Horse Awards. And when I was there, Aaron Kwok was next to me. Shu Qi was behind me. Tony Leung was there. And I remember Jack Neo telling me, ‘Gurmit, basket lah, you. You idiot. A lot of Chinese actors in Singapore speak Chinese, want to try to go to Golden Horse, cannot. You come to my movie, do a few Chinese words, go Golden Horse already. You’re not even Chinese, leh.’ I said, I know, I didn’t ask for it. You sent the tape, not me. So that was very bizarre. I remember walking on the red carpet and my wife was with me in a strapless gown. And I was in a tuxedo, walking on the red carpet. The photographers were taking pictures of my wife. My manager had to tell them, ‘She’s not an actress.’ They all thought that she was the star and I was just the toyboy that she had brought along for the red carpet. So cute.

Q: Thanks for a great interview. Any closing remarks?

I guess I want to put it on the record that I want to thank my family for the past 20 years. Like I thanked my supporting cast of PCK for wasting their lives for eight years, I want to thank my family for wasting their lives for 20 years with me, and now, I’m going to do all I can to pay it back. I mean, what’s lost is lost, there’s nothing I can do about that, but I hope to make new memories so that when I finally leave this place, my kids can tell their children, ‘Grandpa wasn’t around for a while, but after that, he was.’