For comedian Thep, it's rags to riches and back to rags
Like Charlie Chaplin, Thep Po-ngam became a rags-to-riches star. But that's about as far as his luck would stretch.
Comedian and actor Suthep “Thep” Po-Ngam continues testing Mark Twain’s theory that the source of humour isn’t joy but sorrow.
Recently Thep’s wife, Passarawan “Jum” Songpeerapat, revealed that they’ve split up after 35 years together. They have two children. Passarawan tells Thai Rath Online it was hard to leave him, but she has.
There was no need to speculate about the reason for the split because everyone knows Thep’s had money problems for years, and Jum pretty much confirms that she’d had enough of his financial carelessness. Not long ago he wound up in bankruptcy court after defaulting on instalments for five townhouses he’d bought in Pattaya. All the property was handed over to his creditor.
Thep had a rough start in life. Born in the East and raised in the South, he only made it as far as Grade 4 in school. Still a child, he went to work, earning Bt5 a day with a travelling cinema show and then later a barely living wage selling charcoal.
Next he hit the road with a country-music band and singer Phern Phromdaen, and that’s when he discovered his talent for making the audience laugh. Thep and two other comedians, Der Doksadao and Den Dokpradu, developed a slapstick routine that went over big and got the trio into a string of hit films. Thep then went on to make a fortune during Bangkok’s comedy-cafe boom of the late 1990s. More movies and TV shows followed. Like Charlie Chaplin, Thep became a rags-to-riches star.
But that’s about as far as his luck would stretch.
The man’s just plain unfortunate when it comes to investing his money. He poured millions of baht into a garage, a beauty salon, B-movie productions and housing estates, but never saw a satang of profit. It drained away everything he earned from show business. He sacrificed his financial independence and then lost his home. Now he’s lost his wife.
Jum is certainly not abandoning him on short notice. Through the years there were many fights over his financial dealings, she says, and Thep’s default counterpunch was always to invite her to pack her bags.
“He could have Bt20 million in savings alone, but he messed it up with all those projects,” she says. “Whenever we reached the emotional end of an argument he always wanted me to leave him for good. He kept trying to toss me away.”
The couple patched things up time and again, but then came the final straw, when Thep became a partner with one of his fans to open a restaurant in the Ram-Indra area. The deal went bad and Thep pulled out, but his wife took his partner’s side and a share in the eatery.
“I can only let her go,” Thep tells Thai Rath TV. “I have led her along for 35 years and now I cannot afford to buy her a big house or fancy car.”
Thep is left with a small cattle farm in Nakhon Pathom, but the cows aren’t intended for the slaughterhouse. He’s a vegetarian and they’re his companions. He runs a small food stall to earn enough money for their feed. He’s been sleeping in his car most nights for the last couple of months. We imagine it brings back grim memories of his youth on the road with movie caravan. He was probably 16 then. Now he’s 66.
