By Kumar de Silva
I still remember that evening. 9.00 pm on Monday, 06 January 1986. The wretched television set at home was broken and I somehow had to watch my first ever Bonsoir. I cannot remember how it happened, but I ended up with friends on the Kollupitiya pavement opposite a shop that sold television sets. There were about ten of them in the large glass show window. All except one were tuned to a cricket match on Rupavahini. The smallest one, and a black and white set at that, was tuned to ITN. A large crowd had gathered in front of the shop to watch the match on the multiple screens. Mind you, in 1986, owning a television set was still a relative luxury. I was the only one watching ITN and my maiden Bonsoir. Some of them asked me, “Malli aye match eka balanne neththe?” The idiots did not realize that this was me watching my premiering moment on Sri Lankan television. Imagine my indignity and disappointment when none of them even recognized me.
Sir Lester James Peiris and Dr. Sumithra Peiris
Mrs. Thureau
01.Forty years later, today, 06 January 2026, as I look back, I tell myself what a journey it has been over the past four decades. Bonsoir was conceived way back in 1985 by Mrs. Josiane Thureau of the French Foreign Ministry. She was an adventurous woman and daring in her job. It was to be a window to France, une vitrine française, on local television. Why she chose Sri Lanka from all the countries in the world, I have not the slightest idea. Taking the baton from her was Bernard Prunières, her friend in Colombo. He was the Cultural Counsellor of the French Embassy in Colombo. He, in turn, consulted his friend, ITN’s competent authority Thevis Guruge, who, together with his Director of Programmes Nanda Jayamanne, hit upon the idea and thus Bonsoir was born. It was Aruni Devaraja, now Wijewardene, who first hosted the show in July 1985. She left six months later to join the Foreign Service and that is how I came in, in January 1986. Yasmin Rajapakse joined me three months later, in March 1986, and voilà, that is how the story unfolded. Yasmin and I have still not been able to extricate ourselves from each other. Forty years down the line we now host Rendez Vous with Yasmin and Kumar for the Embassy of France in Sri Lanka. Our new tag line is “Ze Olde Couple Eees Back”.
As I look back over this forty-year journey, I still cannot fathom the impact Bonsoir had on Sri Lankan television audiences at that time. Those little children who watched Bonsoir in 1986 are now adults in their mid-forties and above. What great nostalgia it is when numerous unknown people still come up to me at events and in random places and speak about the Bonsoir of their childhood. Once, many years ago, when Maris Indra Fernando, a dear friend who lives in Paris, had invited her mother Rachel de Croos to France and was taking her sightseeing around Paris, the latter said, “Ah, I have seen all these places.” A shocked Indra asked her, “How? When? Where?” The old lady coolly replied, “On Bonsoir on my TV set in Negombo.” Poor Indra was gobsmacked. Well known singer Randhir Vithana still blames me for having had to learn French, simply because his mother watched Bonsoir.
What shocks me the most is when random Sri Lankans I cross paths with in the Paris underground Metro ask me about Bonsoir. Apart from opening multiple doors in my life to France, the French language, culture and francophonie, Bonsoir also brought me several other wonderful opportunities on Sri Lankan television, on ITN, TNL and even briefly on Rupavahini.
02.TNL
My stint at TNL is yet another memorable experience. It was a pleasure to work with Shan Wickremasinghe, also because he and I share the same birthday, 20 December. I also loved the drive to verdant Bolgoda, away from the mayhem of Colombo. Celluloid Lokaya was a bilingual talk show featuring stars from the Sinhala silver screen, which I co-hosted with Chamurditha Samarawickrema. There was also a business talk show I hosted called Business.Com.
Giving directions to interviewees to get to TNL was very easy. I simply had to say, “Come along the San Michele Road to Bolgoda.” The majority of them remembered. Readers of an older generation would gleefully read between these lines.
03.FANCLUB
Fan Club followed hot on the heels of Bonsoir. That was an exciting parallel journey in music and music television. At that time ITN had old music videos which kept getting recycled. Those were also the days when copyrights took a back seat. I remember once getting a call to the French Embassy from a teenager called Sarath Satyamurthi from Barnes Place. He said he could give me the latest songs on VHS cassette tapes which he got from London every week. That was a blessing, and I jumped at the idea. My producer at ITN got them instantly converted to Umatic and that is how all those latest songs premiered on ITN. No one ever spoke about copyrights. Sarath and I later became good friends. I was very sad to learn that he passed away at an early age. Another supportive music collaborator was Sohan Weerasinghe’s daughter Erandika. She used to get the latest Smash Hits magazines from abroad and lend them to me every week. I faithfully photocopied the pages and read out all the latest pop news on Fan Club.
Somewhere down the line, ITN invited me to host a monthly Dhamma discussion programme telecast every Poya night. It was called Dhamma in Daily Life. Among my guests were Mithra Wettimuny, Professor Asanga Tillekeratne, Ven. Dhammavihari Thera, Ven. Homagama Kondanna Thera and Mr. Bogoda Premaratne. These were half hour chats centred around a single topic and conducted in very simple English. We consciously avoided Pali gathas so as not to sound pedantic. We did not preach the Dhamma either. Instead, we discussed life. What struck me most was that we had a very large number of non-Buddhist viewers. These Dhamma discussions later continued on Rupavahini as well. I take great pleasure in proudly calling myself Sri Lanka’s worst ever news reader. I truly was. I function best in front of the camera when there is no script in my hand. I was very unhappy reading the news because I knew it was simply not my forte. How many times did I request ITN’s then Director of Programmes, Mr. Ranjith Fernando, to remove me from news reading, but he did not budge. I pleaded repeatedly and that too did not work. As a last resort, I pulled out my trump card and consciously made mistakes while reading the news. The warnings came. I made more mistakes on purpose. More warnings followed. I continued making even more mistakes until I finally got myself sacked. What a great relief. In hindsight, I believe I might have been the only news reader on Sri Lankan television to deliberately get himself sacked.
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| Fame Game - Rozanne and Kumar |
04.PULSE
Then, with the advent of social media, came Pulse, and what a journey that was, before, during and after Covid. I must thank Janeeth Rodrigo for digging me out of self-imposed retirement, and Sachitha Kalingamudali for his continuous support on the shows. The Pulse chats were shot everywhere. On the pavement outside Pilawoos, in boats on the Beira Lake, while eating string hoppers at The Commons Coffee House with Kishu Gomes, with fork and knife at that, and getting hammered on social media. I remember a WhatsApp live interview during the Covid lockdown with Yashoda Wimaladharma. I was under an umbrella in pouring rain and almost got struck by lightning. The list goes on. After the three Pulse talk shows, Anything But with Kumar de Silva, The Lockdown Diaries and Aperitifs with Kumar, I thought it was time to retire and focus on my journey as a Corporate Etiquette Trainer. That, alas, was not to be.
Then came Rishini Weeraratne to dig me out of my second self-imposed retirement, and here I am hosting Fame Game for The Sun (Daily Mirror) with former Miss Sri Lanka Universe, Rozanne Diasz.
I have a lot of people to thank in this four-decade journey, but with due respect to all of them, if I were to single out three, it would be two people and one entity. Thank you, Madame Josiane Thureau, for Bonsoir, your audio-visual experiment on Sri Lankan television that changed my life forever. Thank you, Mrs. B. A. Fernando, my French teacher at my alma mater, Wesley College, Colombo. If not for the French you taught me, I would never have got that job. And last but not least, thank you to the Embassy of France in Sri Lanka for your confidence in me.
Vive l’amitié franco Sri Lankaise.
And so, I journey on!
