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Scroobal aka Mr Victor Khoo:


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>> ASIAONE / BUSINESS / OFFICE / HOT JOBS / STORY

Wong Lim Hoh
Mon, Jul 09, 2007
The Straits Times




The puppet master


IT IS a story which still makes the rounds today. It involves ventriloquist Victor Khoo, his puppet Charlee and a little boy with a precocious command of Hokkien profanities.

Khoo and Charlee were hosting a radio show called Happy Talk in the 1990s when the little boy called in to take part in a quiz. Asked what the female equivalent of a cock (i.e. cockerel) was, the boy gleefully let loose the coarse Hokkien term for a woman's private parts.

Chances are you've heard the tale regaled to you with great relish by someone who knows someone who's heard the whole bawdy episode.

Khoo's lips curl into a sardonic grin.

'Yeah, people come up to me all the time and swear blind that they've heard it themselves. I say, 'Okay lah, good for you',' he says.

'Of course,' he says in the next breath with mock vexation, 'it's not true. There's always a one-second delay on radio shows. You think they'd let the show go on if it had really happened?'

He reckons the rumour began as a joke cracked by a deejay during a road show.

'But it got so strong that the radio station asked if we should have a press conference to explain things. I said, 'Leave it'. Of course, a lot more people tuned in hoping to catch another gaffe.'

There's another rumour - a more insidious one - revolving around the 50something magician, emcee, film-maker and all-round entertainer. That, in his youth, he lived off the earnings of a Taiwanese songstress.

Flashback

'We were very poor but happy. Every Sunday, the 11 of us would cramp into my father's Morris Oxford and we would drive to Changi and watch the RSAF planes come in. Those were wonderful times'
- On growing up with his siblings

'You know, I get jealous of him. People come up to him all the time and ask me about Charlee. Everybody knows him but some of these people don't know my name. He's more famous than I am'
- On his puppet Charlee


His shoulders rise and fall in a defeated shrug. He patiently explains how he used to work back in the 1980s as the entertainment director for Mandarin Hotel. His duties included hiring and programming dancers and singers from around the region for Neptune Theatre.

'People probably started talking because her mother was very nice to me and was always bringing me food. But that's probably because she wanted me to give her daughter a better slot.'

While he admits there were pretty girls and temptations aplenty, he never had any dalliances except with one - a Hong Kong singer called Lam May Yee whom he married.

Now, that's a great love story, one which ended rather sadly, but more about that later.

Poor but happy

SINGAPORE'S most famous ventriloquist and emcee likes to impress upon you that he has 'been there done that' just a tad too enthusiastically, but he has.

He's been on TV, done radio, performed in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and Trump's Castle in Atlantic City and directed a movie.

He wore a poodle perm long before Singapore Idol judge Florence Lian got skewered for hers. He's also had liposuction long before the procedure became fashionable.

Khoo was born the eighth of 11 children to a rent collector and a housewife. He grew up in a small shophouse in Bras Basah where the NTUC Income Building now stands.

They were poor but happy.

The ham in him surfaced early. When he was about eight, he and two of his brothers formed a trio called The Singing Khoos and won every talent contest until they were barred from entering more competitions.

Later, he and several other siblings formed The Dancing Khoos.

'I took tap lessons and even studied ballet for three years at The Singapore Ballet Academy. I even took part in The Nutcracker Suite at the Victoria Theatre, you know,' he says, laughing.

His late father Khoo Teng Eng, he gushes, was 'a fantastic man'.

He recalls: 'Even though he had little education, he gave English tuition for extra money. He also taught himself magic and performed regularly in church. He had a friend, an Englishman Philip Scoffield, who introduced him to Charlee and ventriloquism.'

Of all his siblings, Khoo showed the most interest in performing. So it was to him that his father - who suffered a heart attack and died while trying to clear immigration from Hong Kong into China in 1973 - taught ventriloquism and bequeathed Charlee.

Khoo says: 'He left me a note - 'I give you this piece of wood with the hope that you can make money out of it and learn the value of money'.'

A student debater, the former St Joseph's and St Patrick's alumnus adds: 'He was a bit disappointed that I decided not to go to university and study law. All my siblings are graduates and quite a few of them are lawyers. If they were to form a law firm, it would be Khoo and Khoo and Khoo and Khoo...'

Instead, he became entertainment manager at the now-defunct Hotel Malaysia.

One year later, he was offered the position of entertainment director at Mandarin Hotel where, among other duties, he hired entertainers and emceed programmes for the Neptune Theatre and The Kasbah.

One of the singers he recruited was Anita Sarawak. The sultry diva was then an up-and-coming singer performing at The Peking Restaurant in Orchard Road.

Anita remembers Khoo with great affection and fondness. 'In life, you have to have a good friend and Victor was very kind, always encouraging me to try new things.'

It was here that he met his first wife, Lam, a singer from Hong Kong. Never mind that she spoke no English and the Peranakan boy spoke no Cantonese.

He hit on the perfect ploy to pursue her.

'I told her I'd teach her English,' he says.

They courted for two years before tying the knot. She gave him twin boys Barry and Brandon, now 28. Barry is a computer animator and Brandon, a drummer with local band The UnXpected.

Lam was to be a major influence on his life. She encouraged him to strike out on his own.

Victor Khoo Productions came into being in 1980 and still thrives today, offering all sorts of services, from hosting to staging illusions and, of course, performing with Charlee and his two other puppets, Char Cole and Cha Cha.

Depending on the complexity, he charges between $4,000 and $10,000 for each gig, 'more if it's overseas'.

She also encouraged him to improve his appearance. Hence, the liposuction procedure - which reduced his waistline from 102 to 81cm - in a Hong Kong clinic in the late 1980s. His girth now measures about 86cm.

On her advice, he also had his eyebrows, eyelids and underlids tattooed. Like a lot of heartland aunties who underwent similar procedures, he looks as though he's been a bit too generous with the eyebrow pencil and eyeliner.

He's good-natured when you rib him about it.

'She told me then it was the trend, so I went along with it. People ask me, 'Why you so old still want to tattoo?' Eh, I did it when I was 20 years younger, lah.'

His voice softens when he talks about Lam, who fought a 12-year battle with cancer and finally succumbed to the disease in 1995. He was there with her throughout her ordeal.

When the doctor suggested a mastectomy of her left breast, she was inconsolable.

Khoo recalls: 'She said she was going to die anyway and she wanted to die a complete woman. But I told her: 'Eh, your breast for whom to see? For me, right? If I don't care, why should you?''

Their son Brandon remembers those traumatic times well.

'I saw a lot of pain and I really admire Dad for what he was doing and how he stuck through it. You know, she was sick for 12 years but he was always particular about her comfort. Whatever she wanted, she would get it.'

He tells you a heartwarming story about his father's devotion.

'Mum was really sick and had been bedridden in the hospital for a while. One day, Dad just sneaked her out and bundled her into the car. He put a CD of the greatest hits of Cliff Richard - her favourite singer - on and just drove her round until it finished playing.'

Having seen the pain his late wife went through, Khoo set up and personally raised funds for The Charlee's Wooden Heart Fund for children suffering from cancer after her death.

Khoo has since remarried - another singer, Shellen, with whom he has two daughters, aged 10 and 11.

He lets on: 'You know, on her deathbed, my wife told me I should make a movie.'

He proclaims himself a movie buff - 'I'll bet you $100 that I can name you which cinema every movie played in before cineplexes came along.'

He's also a stickler for continuity in movies. He hates it when film-makers don't pay attention to details from one scene to another.

And that is how Tiger's Whip came to be. A story about an American who comes to Singapore to look for a cure for his shrinking family jewels, it turned in a limp performance, taking only $60,000 at the box office in 1998.

It cost $700,000 to make and was financed by his brother-in-law.

He says: 'I felt really sorry and bad for my brother-in-law but he was really supportive and told me he wanted to do it.'

Khoo maintains the movie died because 'I didn't know the business of movie publicity and how to PR with the press.'

He has a mini rant about critics who massacred his movie but then grudgingly admits that he might have relied too much on other people.

Some of his other comments were almost funnily, if unintentionally, telling: 'I just wanted to make a movie with perfect continuity' and 'I know it's a bad movie but I've seen worse movies survive and make money'.

Proud of achievements

KHOO has a propensity to get a tad defensive over what he perceives to be discrimination about his age or a lack of appreciation for his talents or the experience he has amassed over the years. He is very proud of his achievements and he makes sure you know it.

It's, however, not a defensiveness rooted in deep bitterness. He seems appeased enough each time he's had a little rant.

'Que sera sera,' he always says with a shrug.

Life, after all, has not been too bad.

Khoo's talents, and, of course, Charlee and company, have given him a fairly good life. He still gets regular gigs here and around the region, although he laments the ridiculous undercutting that is so endemic in the business.

He owns the 1,000 sq ft office he has in the Henderson area. He and his family live in a 2,000 sq ft Yong An Park condominium in River Valley which he bought for $400,000 two decades ago and which is worth at least $3 million now. He sold a similar-sized apartment in Regency Park just down the road not too long ago.

He lets on: 'You know, I talk to my puppets. Each time before I have a big show, I'd lay Charlee, Char Cole and Cha Cha out on the bed and say to them: 'Okay, this is a big show. Make sure you don't fail'.'

Of all his children, younger daughter Vanessa shows some interest in ventriloquism. But he says: 'I don't want to train her yet. I'd only do it if she's really interested.'

He looks wistfully at Charlee, now 60 years old, sitting in his suitcase: 'I will not let anyone perform with him if he has no interest. You can destroy him and destroy what my father and I have built up.'

And if no one is interested?

He says: 'Then I guess they will not talk again for the rest of their lives.'
 

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