{"id":27244,"date":"2007-03-08T14:35:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-08T14:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27244"},"modified":"2024-07-04T13:50:21","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T05:50:21","slug":"the-60-second-plug-monti-and-logis-indian-stories-chinese-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2007\/03\/the-60-second-plug-monti-and-logis-indian-stories-chinese-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"The 60 Second Plug: Monti and Logi’s “Indian Stories, Chinese Tales”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Tell the\nworld about Fong Muntoh, AKA Monti.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am from the land of many virgins: Ipoh. I was born\nthere and spent a great deal of my life growing up in Hospital Bahagia Tanjung\nRambutan — because my mum was a nurse there, and she used to get the inmates\nto look after me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to be a singer but was told I didn’t have the\nface for it. I started performing during my summer holidays in England, in the\nlate 1980s, and my first pay-cheque was two pints of beer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I love to make people laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did\nyou meet Logi? Was it a serendipitous meeting? What transpired to make you both\njoin forces?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We met in 1998, and, yes, it was serendipity that\nstarted the first meeting. We met a second time over coffee, one thing led to\nanother — and now, nine years, 13 shows and many corporate functions later,\nwe’re still at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that time there were no Indian and Chinese comic\nduos, so we thought: why not? Indians talk a lot and Chinese aren’t far behind,\nso we must have many stories to tell lah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you\nhave day jobs?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, both of us have a serious side. Logi is a\nmanagement consultant for corporate companies and financial institutions, and I\nam a director in a healthcare management company that manages clinics and\nnursing homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s\nirony to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many years ago, an ex-boss told me not to go into\ncomedy, because I was a senior manager at the time, and my image was important,\nto get respect from both employees and business partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I’ve found that employees and business partners\nrespect me more, now, because they see me as a human being — one with a\npassion for comedy, and not just another straight-laced, constipated-faced\ncorporate personality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s irony to me. In fact, many of my current\ncorporate clients come for our shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you\ncome up with material for your shows?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the country we live in, and with the way the people\nwho are managing this country think, talk and do things, it is impossible not\nto have comedy material. From the sending of National Service trainees to Johor\nand not the army, to morality spies, to the levels of confidence our\nenforcement units elicit — wow, the list is endless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also draw our inspiration from our personal\nexperiences: mother stories, father stories, relatives and friends stories, and\nso on. No grandmother and grandfather stories, though; they were long gone\nbefore I came along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which Malaysian\nminister inspires you most? Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samy Vellu, without a doubt. He simply likes to talk.\nA lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell us\nmore about Indian Stories, Chinese Tales<\/em>.\nHow did the title come about in the first place?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You will notice that, over the years, all our shows\nhave some sort of controversial or intriguing titles, like Ipoh Mali Semua Taluh, Taruh Taruh Taruh<\/em> and Ipoh Mali Kencing Tada Bunyi<\/em>. A good title helps us in our writing,\nand racy and racially-laced ones intrigue audiences — and sometimes even the\nauthorities. The Special Branch interviewed us three times last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any\nbrushes with DBKL, over ‘sensitive’ or controversial topics you’ve covered in\nyour shows?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who hasn’t? Our most memorable experience was during Ipoh Mali Kencing Tada Bunyi<\/em>, when the\nBandaraya officer kept saying: “Ini tak boleh, kencing mana tada\nbunyi?” He wanted us to change the show’s title, three hours before the\nshow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ipoh Mali Semua Taluh<\/em> also had problems, because the spelling did not meet a Dewan Bahasa standard: ‘mali’ and ‘taluh’ are words spelt wrong, and our title was wrong grammatically. So for both these shows, the approval certificates record their titles as Ipoh<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally, though, DBKL has been gracious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any funny\nstories about audience members, from your past shows?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sorry, I will not comment on the people that pay our\nbills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What will\nyou be up to, after this?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will be doing a one man stand-up show in The Actors\nStudio @ Greenhall, in Penang, in June. Also, I might be involved in another\ntwo musicals, this year, with KLPac.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell us a\nlittle known fact about yourself and Logi.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Logi has always wanted to be singer — but he can only sing in the F key. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for myself, I always wanted to be an action hero in a movie. And I believe that I’m handsome — though my wife always reminds me otherwise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 08.03.2007 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tell the world about Fong Muntoh, AKA Monti. I am from the land of many virgins: Ipoh. I was born there and spent a great deal of my life growing up in Hospital Bahagia Tanjung Rambutan — because my mum was a nurse there, and she used to get the inmates to look after me. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3558,3535],"tags":[861,228,3636,3635],"language":[7523],"writer":[7614],"class_list":["post-27244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-interview","category-theatre","tag-comedy","tag-interview","tag-logi","tag-monti","language-english","writer-juliet-jacobs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27244"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39078,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27244\/revisions\/39078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27244"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27244"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}