Doing it in style

CHENNAI'S MOST popular breakfast show on Sun TV, `Vanakkam Tamizhagam' completes a thousand episodes when it goes on air on Monday. And the hostess Uma Padmanabhan, who has been on the show right from episode one, is obviously thrilled.

``Earlier, I was apprehensive about breakfast shows. I was quite sceptical. I was Sun TV's first newsreader, and have been with the channel ever since it was around 10 months old. So to go off air from the news slot was a bit disappointing first,'' she recalls.

The channel shifted her from newsreading to host the breakfast show because it wanted anchors to be associated with specific shows. And the fact that Uma had already hosted a variety of shows including `Malarum Mottum' (for kids), `Thirai Vimarsanam', `Aalosanai Neram' (which she also directed) and `Veetukku Veedu', made her the channel's obvious choice to host the breakfast show.

``I have only Mr. Kalanidhi Maran to thank for all the support and confidence he had in me. It was he who thought I should host the programme,'' says Uma. She started off co-hosting the show with Varadarajan initially and with `Varthai Vilayattu' Ramesh Prabha for the last three years.

It was seven years ago when Uma first applied for the job of a compere at Sun TV when her husband compelled her to do it. ``I was married with a ten year old daughter then,'' she says. ``Ten month old you mean,'' we correct her. ``No, ten year old, now my daughter is 17 years old,'' she says with her trade-mark smile that she's been sporting throughout her thousand odd shows. ``People used to say I kept smiling even when I was ripping apart movies in the strongest terms.''

The commerce graduate from SIET college went on to host the channel's live shows from Manali and Singapore before she finally settled down to host `Vanakkam Tamizhagam'. ``It has been branded as a pleasant breakfast show, so we refrain from controversies and focus on the profiles of achievers, not just the film personalities,'' explains Uma.

Among her favourite shows were her fun-filled tryst with Cho Ramaswamy after having been instructed not to bring politics into the show, and also a chat with the American who called himself Madurai Manickkam who spoke for 40 minutes in ``sweet Senthamizh'' and even Madras Tamil!

The 1000th episode will feature no guest, just a recap of the nuggets that capture the spirit of the last 1000 episodes.

By Sudhish Kamath

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